How To Download And Install

Start with the entry, not the button

Every download page on this index carries a spec sheet and a set of notes. Read both before you pull anything. The spec sheet tells you the archive size, the file name and the exact build. The notes tell you what tends to go wrong with this particular title, which is different for almost every entry. Two minutes there saves an hour later.

Check your free space against the archive size and roughly double it. Unpacking needs room for both the archive and its contents, and installers need working space on top of that. A disk that fills partway through an install leaves you with a half installed application, which is more work to remove than to have avoided.

Pull the file

Every entry offers a direct link and a torrent magnet. Use whichever suits your connection. Direct links are simpler and are usually faster on a good line. Torrents hold up better on a connection that drops, because they resume without you doing anything.

For direct links, use a download manager rather than a browser. Browsers lose a partial download when the connection drops, and on a four gigabyte archive over an unreliable line that will happen. A manager keeps the segment map and picks up where it stopped, even after a reboot.

When the download finishes, check the file size against the number on the entry page. If it is short, the download did not complete, and that single check explains most of the archives that will not open.

Unpack it properly

Extract to a real folder on a local drive. Not to a network share, not to a removable stick, and not by running the installer from inside an archive viewer. Archive viewers unpack to a temporary directory that gets cleared while the installer is still using it, which produces failures that make no sense when you read the error.

If the entry is a split set, put every part in the same folder and open the first one. The archiver finds the rest itself. A missing part gives you an error about a corrupt archive, which is misleading but is almost always what it means.

Deal with the scanner before you start

Several entries here contain licensing modules or activation utilities. Every scanner on the market flags those on behaviour, because modifying files and registry keys is exactly what they are built to catch. Where that applies, the entry says so and tells you to add an exclusion.

Add the exclusion for the folder before you extract, not after. A scanner that removes a file mid extraction leaves you with an archive that appears to have unpacked and an install that fails at a step nowhere near the real problem.

Turn protection back on when you are done. Leaving a machine unprotected because one install needed it is how a bad week starts.

Install in the right order

Remove any older version of the same software first, properly, through the control panel rather than by deleting the folder. Installing over the top is the second most common cause of reports that arrive at this desk.

Disconnect from the network if the entry tells you to. Several installers check in during setup and change what they install based on the answer. Offline installs match what the entry describes.

Run the installer as administrator and then leave it alone. Large suites appear to stall for minutes at a time. That is normal and interrupting it is not.

When it finishes, close the installer rather than using its launch button. That button often starts the application in a state where the last step of setup has not settled, and the result looks like a licensing failure when it is nothing of the sort.

After the first launch

Turn off automatic updates in the application itself. An update will replace exactly the components that make the install work as described.

If the entry mentions a firewall rule, add it. Blocking an executable outbound keeps it in the state you installed it in.

Then use the thing for ten minutes before you delete the archive. If something is wrong, the report form on the entry page is the fastest way to get it looked at, and you will want the archive still around while that happens.