What is the difference between copying a game and installing a game?

When my friend looks for a game, he doesn't need an installer. He just uses his external hard disk drive and copies the game from the program files. The game runs smoothly.





So what is the difference if you install a game, and just copied the game?





Are there any difference when it comes to performance?|||He might do this with older games but he aint doin it with any game that came out on the shelves in the last 6 years. Games and software like this are called "stand alone" programs and you dont find many of them these days unless you play soltaire or hearts. Graphics intense games when installing look at your system and set themselves up acdcording to your particular system.|||Not really, unless you fail to copy all of the files to the correct directories. Also, Windows/Mac OS X can hide files. In Windows, most programs are held entirely in their Program folder. So you should be okay. An installer just copies all the files from the CD/package easily and automatically. Unless it's a complex game/program that might utilized such hidden files, copying should work fine. If it doesn't delete the files you copied, and use and install.|||If the game surport transplanting, they are no differences. If not, you can't play it.|||installing the game does.. well pretty much whatever the programmer set up to make the game playable on a computer that the user might have.. i will copy DLL files onto the computer and/or make registry entries... so basically "installing" just means putting the "required" files onto the computer so they may run properly..





and the slower your computer and the better the game the more lag and sluggishness you will see when running the game off the external.. the computer needs to pull the graphic files from the HD to play.. you may find loading times to me longer on a external. but everything comes down to what kind of hardware is being use.