In this article, I will teach you how to run Netbeans IDE without using the installer. There are many good reasons not to use the installer and I have listed them down in a previous post.
First, you need to obtain the OS independent zip distribution of Netbeans. You can get it from the following page:
Before you click the download button, look for the drop-down list labeled "platform" and select the item "OS Independent Zip". Click the download button and save the zip file to your local disk.
For this article, I downloaded the Java SE Bundle of Netbeans 6.7. The downloaded file is called "netbeans-6.7-200906241340-ml-javase.zip". The zip file contains a folder named "netbeans". Extract the folder netbeans to any folder of your choice. In my case, I keep all manually installed applications inside the folder "D:\PortableApps" so my netbeans installation path would be "D:\PortableApps\netbeans". Note that the netbeans folder should contain the subfolders "bin", "etc" among others.
I suggest renaming the installation path to reflect the version number of the program. I changed mine so the installation path is now "D:\PortableApps\netbeans6.7"
Now, you have to tell Netbeans where you installed the JDK. Open the file named "netbeans.conf" which is located in the "etc" folder under your netbeans installation folder (e.g. "D:\PortableApps\netbeans6.7\etc\netbeans.conf ") . Then, delete the character # in the following line to uncomment it.
#netbeans_jdkhome="/path/to/jdk"
Then, change its value to the path of your JDK installation. It should now look something like this:
netbeans_jdkhome="C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_10"
You can now start NetBeans by double-clicking the file "netbeans.exe" which is located inside the bin folder of your Netbeans installation (e.g. "D:\PortableApps\netbeans6.7\bin\netbeans.exe")
*UPDATE 1
If you are trying to install on a USB flash drive, you can also change the following settings to point to a relative path in your USB drive to make your development environment truly portable.
netbeans_jdkhome="\PortableApps\jdk1.6.0_10"
netbeans_default_userdir="\mister\netbeans_userdir"
netbeans_default_cachedir="\mister\netbeans_cachedir"
*UPDATE 2
If you are trying to install on a USB flash drive, you can install JDK to your hard drive, and then just copy the JDK folder to your USB drive.