Dan Smith wrote in #note-1:
Yeah, if you give the installer a destination path that exists, it deletes that destination before re-creating and installing to it. It does that to make sure that there isn't anything left-over from a previous install, assuming you're installing over the previous. Even if you point it somewhere else, it needs to clear that location so that there aren't conflicting files that are pre-existing with what needs to be installed.
AFAIK, any installer would do the same thing and indeed, CHIRP just uses a standard installer tool to do its work. This has been how the tool we use to install has behaved as long as I can remember. Since it will let you install wherever you tell it, I'm not sure there's any way it can realistically do anything other than what it's doing now.
Dan, what installer are you using? I'm willing to take a look and see if there is an option to make it behave differently.
Do you need a privileged account to use the program on Windows? I'm guessing maybe, due to the driver access. If not, then one alternative would be to install without requiring the UAC prompt. Then the installer would not have access to the Program Files directory even if the user tried to use that.
Dan Smith wrote in #note-1:
Yeah, if you give the installer a destination path that exists, it deletes that destination before re-creating and installing to it. It does that to make sure that there isn't anything left-over from a previous install, assuming you're installing over the previous. Even if you point it somewhere else, it needs to clear that location so that there aren't conflicting files that are pre-existing with what needs to be installed.
AFAIK, any installer would do the same thing and indeed, CHIRP just uses a standard installer tool to do its work. This has been how the tool we use to install has behaved as long as I can remember. Since it will let you install wherever you tell it, I'm not sure there's any way it can realistically do anything other than what it's doing now.