Only few applications are usable work immediately after you copy them onto your hard drive. The majority require you to create an installation by means of a software installer.

When you get some program, it is often delivered in an packed distributive format.

For developers there are ample opportunities to make their releases more successful using commercial or freely distributed application installer.

If you deal with Windows operation system, you can use Microsoft Windows Installer that lets programmers create installation.

IntstallShield and SetupBuilder are 2 more installation software applications for Microsoft Windows system.

All of them may create the so-called packages that can help you install software on any Windows system.

Not happy with commercial installer creator programs? There are also a couple of nice open source solutions available. Check out Clickteam Install Creater and Innosetup, to name a few.

A number of developers choose to make their products work on different platforms.

It is often a challenge to create various installation packages for several different systems.

Developers ought to produce and assure the quality of each installer, be it for Linux, Mac OS or Windows XP.

Luckily, there are also cross-system software installer solutions.

For example, InstallAnywhere which is a commercial setup creator, or an open source Java install generator for different systems named IzPack.

A software distribution bundle in most cases has to contain not only an setup creator, but also an uninstaller.

A couple of years ago many applications could not be uninstalled properly without the help of dedicated third-party programs.

However, nowadays the majority of software solutions feature more or less adequate uninstallers, therefore you do not have to think a lot about obtaining some other solution to erase things off your machine.

Still, even today there could be use for third party uninstallers.

Many applications have functionalities that are not erased by the standard uninstall program.

Trojan and spyware applications pose one more hazard to your system.

Such a soultion does not delete itself voluntarily, so some assistance from a dedicated uninstaller could be needed.

Uninstallers sometimes include some extra abilities such as handing cache memory and managing temporary files, and so on.