What is the difference between Installation and copying dump??

Hi,
What is the difference between installing a software and just copying its dump. Well I know that a installer actually puts in some entries in registry so does that mean if I copied the installed dump and then put the required registry entries the software would work??

Yes. Provided registry is the only thing that the installer updates.

Apart from registries.. there may be files copied to other locations ( for e.g. drivers, common/shared dlls copied to system directories)
Installers may also be unconsciously writing into registry in the process of registering COM dlls.

Really!? That's brand new info for me...

Apart from copying files, registering components and performing cutom tasks - Deployment Tools also keep a record of actions taken at install time so they can be undone at uninstallation time.

This record is also utilized at Patch and Update times.

Note that good installation tools are complex pieces of software - yet, easy to use.

They need to be able to install components (files, keys, etc) that are shared across other components of the product being deployed. (By components, I refer to logical divisions of a product and not to a technology.) Which means that if a products is logically divided into 4 components: Component 1, 2, 3 and 4 say - it is very likely that optional Components 1, 2 and 3 are dependent on the existence Component 4 for the product to function correctly.

Should the user Uninstall Component 2 - Component 4 should stay put so that other optional components that remain continue to function correctly. All the same, when the last optional component is uninstalled, Component 4 also should be - so that on complete software uinstallation, the computer is clean.

As you can see, Software Deployment is hence a huge domain, and is more than just file copy.

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