I was lookin around and stumbled upon this page, can any one tell me if its true?
Let me know what you guys think.
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there's tons of info about booting from USB-flash here :
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showforum=37
btw : I doubt that it's a legal free version of XP ..
1. It goes to and endless loop of links... so it's not true...
2. Most of those links are in something that looks like Russian...
3. Microsoft, Windows, XP, USB, portable... and free? of course is not legal and is not true...
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I have no signature again...
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report
1) Not endless. If you go far enough it asks you to log in to LiveJournal.
2) Uhhuh.
3a) There are tools that use YOUR Windows XP installation CD to grab the necessary files. BartPE is a good example, although this link appears to be something different.
3b) Just because something isn't legal doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
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there's a coupla ways to do this but since most of them violate the M$ Eula and are not open source you won't find them discussed here.
If you're really interested in this the place to start is BartPE. It has tools for using your own xp license and creating a bootable CD which can also be ported to usb.
While this is a neat concept in theory let me ground you to some of the drawbacks.
Very Few mobos support usb booting. more and more, but still only few.
getting it to work is a pain.
Another way to get it to work in a window is using a virtualPC image. VirtualPC is free and supposedly works portable. disk images are pretty big tho. running from a flash drive probably wouldn't go so well.
I've dl'd a less than kosher copy of a full bartPE image but i haven't played with it. I just don't do enough desktop support to make it worth the time and flash drive space to finish.
hope this helps.. like i said i think i've got this working but it's so ungainly and unsupported it's hardly worthwhile.
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i am playing with ubuntu portable via qemu. directions from winpenpackdotcom worked like a charm. my company is considering some linux moves and this is giving us a really useful test phase for us.
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XP has been made portable by a couple people and widely available on the internet. It's also highly illegal and I recommend you not use it. Not only has XP been made portable, I know for a fact that Vista has already been made portable.
Amazing what people can do, isn't it?
It doesn't have to be illegal. BartPE is a perfectly good example of a legal solution as it uses your own XP CD for source files, which it extracts and modifies into a portable Windows.
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I found qemu is a good portable emulator, I've been running many copies of linux as well as win XP and 98 from my pocket hd. If you realy want a portable win XP qemu is easy and free. to get xp though you need to get a cd or iso yourself.
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eagle scout
Technology can solve all our problems, like using a laptop for a space heater in a cold tent in the middle of winter.
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i tried it but i had no idea how to use it.
This possibly looks like a fake thing as it seems pretty unfeasible to do for a few reasons.
1) XP's Large HD requirements -- You'll easily need a 4 GB USB device to hold everything, including the updates (like SP2). Getting thumbdrives with more than 2 GB's easily exceeds $50 & those over 4 GB's easily hits the $100+ mark.
2) Heavy drive usage -- you'll constantly be having read & writes... especially with the swap file, which any good PC user will have around 2-4 times their system's RAM (~1 GB). This also can cause bottlenecks with the transfer rates & reduces overall life expectancy of the thumbdrive... however long that is.
3) WGA flags galore! -- Since Portable = Polymorphic with XP, it'll start screaming at Microsoft "Legal Copy!" with every system you plug it into.
While it is possible to run a DamnSmall Linux off a thumbdrive in a sub-$100 system (cost excludes monitor, keyboard & mouse), it's infeasible to do same with XP.
~TStodden
Game Monkey Likes You!
My 4GB flash drive was only $30
ITS MOJOPAC
MOJOPAC FREEDOM
http://www.mojopac.com
Im Still Using PortableApps.com Applications On My Mojo But You Can Also Take Your Non-Portable Programs With You. Your Flash Drive Acts Like A Hard Drive So Yea
Na na na, come on!
MojoPac is unbearably slow. I think it basically runs Windows OFF of the flash drive, which Microsoft NEVER intended. I come to this conclusion because it's so FREAKING SLOW. You are basically going to need a REALLY REALLY REALLY fast thumb drive. Like the kind they tout as BEING fast... like if FAST isn't on the features list up by the top in bold, and the fastness didn't add $100 to the price, your drive isn't fast enough.
And when I say slow I mean windows stop responding all the time, the MojoPac interface stops responding (locking you out of your local system until it wakes up!)... I was going to put Steam on it to make Steam portable but it was just too freaking slow.
Basically, it's a good thing they have a trial. Take advantage of it and try it out first before deciding you're going to make MojoPac your new flash drive OS thing.
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Im My Opinion Its Not That Slow Im Using My iPod Nano 2GB So If Its Lower It Might Be Why But Thats My Opinion. I'm Using The Free Version So
YHes There Is A Free Version Out Now
Im Using It To Write In This Fourm And Its So Fast xD (again in my opinon)
Did You Tell The Drive To Optimise For Proformace Cause They Recommend You Do That.
Na na na, come on!
I have been using Mojopac on my PortableApps Drive(Portable Apps Needs a revamp to include what PSTART has) and it runs relatively well. The only draw back to it is that it eats your RAM and SWAP files don't work well with it (I have over 3GIG of SWAP files strewn over my many drives).Processor power is a MUST but I have only begun to experiment. Would like Tips wherever I can get them tho.
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."-Albert Einstein
Found this but didn´t try out so far.
USB drive has to be formatted with HP USB Storage Format Tool to NTFS, the option Quick format has to be omitted. 1GB seems to work. You can use Your own WindowsCD and license to build your windowsXP by reatogo based on BartPE.Then copy the Folder with about 200MB onto the USB drive. Look for i386-Folder and rename it to "minint",
copy "setupldr.bin" and "ntdetect.com" from former i386-folder to the root of Your drive, then rename setupldr.bin to "ntldr". If bios supports usb-boot it should work as a rescuesystem, but as everyday system?
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisici elit, sed eiusmod tempor incidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis .." Friday Next -
"May The Schwartz be with You!" Yogurt the Yoda
in my opinion, like the rescue disk of yore. I was actually looking into this since one of the computers in my office needed to be reinstalled, but I needed to format the c: drive, and came across some info about booting from the usb.
Don't be an uberPr∅. They are stinky.
I use PortableApps on my NTFS flash drive. No problems.
In fact there is no reason why any program shouldn't work. I prefer NTFS because it has lower error rates (such as when power fails or Windows BSoDs while writing data to disk).
Also NTFS supports stuff like compressed/encrypted folders and files and security attributes, which FAT32 does not. However I imagine there's a bit more overhead when you use NTFS (IE you have a smidgen less space on a NTFS drive).
Other than that the only real reason against using NTFS is that Linux doesn't really fully support it yet. With the NTFS-3g drivers it almost does, but it won't let you mount an NTFS file system after Windows has crashed (which for me is all the time). With FAT32 it's a lot easier to get it working with Linux and MacOSX.
If you don't care about them NTFS is the way to go, IMO.
Signature automatically removed for being too awesome.
i tried the tutorial from WinUSB which works very well! I combined it with the tips from the 911-forum. I like it and it works like a normal system. BUT: it's only legal if you have an license for this second installation!
added: in english - http://www.winusb.de/tutorial3_en.html and http://www.winusb.de/tutorial5_en.html
it is FULLLY possable to run windows XP off a usb. the only things you need is an XP install cd & a computer that can boot from usb. when you start the install, select your flash drive and install it like you were installing it to a HDD. there is NO special software to use, just a usb bootable computer.
this is fully legal but not recomended because most computers these days dont boot from usb (to my knowlage), at least computers that are in public or in the office since they are probably like my computers. built for windows 98/NT but running 2000/XP, 400/456Mhz processor and 256MB ram. a basic piece o crap.
Zoop