When I was developing C# winforms applications 15 years ago, I just created a fat signed .exe that was then distributed. Installers and click once stuff was a big turn off for users.

On startup, if not already there, it automagically copied itself to the installation directory, created an autostart directory link and started it from the new location and got killed with a named pipe command. It contained and extracted another .exe that was continuously checking for new versions, downloading them and starting them.

As malwary as it gets but it worked flawlessly!

The windows store nightmare that came after looks dreadful.

I would have hated that, it looks like one thing (a standalone exe) but it is doing something else (installer like).

Love it, jank like that might explain why windows is so busy on startup...