Installing XP on a memory key

Anima

I was just wondering if this is possible and if it is, how well does it work? My plan is to try and install TinyXP onto my 4 gig memory key so I can use it in college with the programs I need fully configured etc. Just wondering if this is feasible.

Thanks.

guil

afaik an os can only be used from an internal hd

Ghost Train

try here
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-pocket,1113.html

tbh its probably not going to be worth the effort. better just to get portable versions of the apps you need and run them off the key than go for the full os

there are linux distros which will work better off a key and might be more straight forward, dsl or puppy linux

some bioses will give you trouble booting from usb... but with linux you can normally get a boot floppy or boot cd that will let you boot off the usb

Anima

Hmm yeah I think you're right there. Ah well, thanks for the help.

Capt'n Midnight

dead easy
install linux / bsd / solaris or what have you on a usb stick
then you can run window in a virtual machine
you could even do Dos + loadlin + ISO to boot the host OS image

natively it's more trouble than it's worth considering
- licencing is messy
- changes in HW may require re-activation

sceptre

guil07 wrote: »

afaik an os can only be used from an internal hd

Nope, relatively easy to use most operating systems from a USB stick, some will even happily run from unwritable media like a CD or DVD.

Red Alert

Mac OS can technically do it I think, Win 98 could be coaxed into running diskless of a PXE server but they deliberately crippled it in Windows 2000.

Capt'n Midnight

there is xp embedded

IIRC the earlier version of 98 was better for running off flash, so avoid 98 SE if you want to head that route

there is some stuff on "installing" on flash for the eee pc too

JonathanAnon

yeah I looked into this a while ago, with some sucess. I got it to work on all my systems but I dont know how it would work on a random PC.

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Bart's PE builder will show you how to create a bootable USB drive that you can plug in to your PC and get it to boot.

Capt'n Midnight

Microsoft representatives have described third-party efforts at producing Windows-based LiveDistros as “improperly licensed” uses of Windows[citation needed], unless you use it solely to rescue your own, properly licensed Installation. However, Nu2 Productions believes the use of BartPE is legal provided that one Windows license is purchased for each BartPE CD, and the Windows license is used for nothing else.

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/licensing/

Licensing issues
In order to make a BartPE installation, your must have a properly licensed copy of the operating system. BartPE does not grant users who do not have a proper Windows XP/2003 license the right to use a BartPE installation.

Also, according to the Microsoft EULA for Windows XP/2003, a user may not simultaneously use more installations of these operating systems than the user has license(s) for. This also goes for BartPE. In practice this means that the user may not use, for instance, a single license installation on one computer while simultaneously using a BartPE installation (created using that license) on another computer.

More information:

* Your local Microsoft Windows end-user license agreement (c:\WINDOWS\system32\eula.txt)
* PE Builder license file

oneway

I've been trying different versions of this for a while and I've got two solutions. Some of these are technical, but I'll list them and we can debate the amount of computer skills you need to get them working.

I assume the rationale is to keep your private stuff off the company computer to stop them snooping around.

The first thing I tried was a program called VMware. This does cost money, but our company had a license for all employees to use it. Basically it allows you to run a "mini-me" computer inside a computer. So inside your main computer you can run another complete and separate version of windows complete with Office, e-mail etc. If you have 1 gb of memory and a 60GB disk, VMware takes, say, 512mb of the memory and 10gb of the disk and allocates this to the "mini-me" computer. The entire "mini-me" disk is contained inside one big data file on the main computer. If you're careful you can get this "mini-me" system to run on 4GB (works better if you use Windows2000 instead of XP, forget about Vista). Once you have this data file down to 4gb you can then move the 4gb file to the USB stick. When you run the "mini-me" computer using this VMware program it appears as a separate computer, your main computer cannot "see" inside it (so any tools they have at work can't spy on you).

The 2nd option is to use a "U3" enabled USB stick. I think SanDisk make the most popular ones. When i first saw U3 I ran a mile (or a km or whatever). It said it was going to load all sorts of programs when i inserted the USB drive. It took a while but I realised that U£ means you can put a program and all of the data on the stick and run them without installing them on your main computer. Two of the more popular programs are ThunderBird for e-mail and firefox for browsing. With Thunderbird running on your USB, all of the e-mails are on the stick and are not accessible from the company’s computer system when you take the stick away. You can also run the MS Word clone (open office) on the stick to edit and view MS Word documents (did someone say CV?) without leaving a paper trail on your company PC.

I started using VMware but moved to using the U3 after a few weeks.