Windows-on-Stick

Something that I think would be good to at least develop your concept to a functional level(And very desirable for a lot of us) is a VirtualBox of Ubuntu. That is a portable version of Virtualbox that has an Ubuntu or alternative Linux distro on it. WEhat you think? Gets around the legal issues I think.

A Windows PE would need to be built by the end user for it to be legal.

Various attempts at a VirtualBox Portable have been made, but as you say there's the issue with it requiring a service. This will be made easier to deal with with the PortableApps.com Launcher, which will support services, but it will still be admin-only.

Microsoft Virtual PC is closed source, as is Moka5 Player.

QEMU has issues with its sound module not being open source, so it's no go here at the moment. Last I heard someone here was trying to rewrite an open source sound driver for it.

Bochs is slow and not terribly compatible.

Looks like no one has figured this out yet. My boss wants me to get portable apps running on WinPE3 and anyone who thinks this isn't possible, doesn't understand WinPE3.

Out of the box the starter and some of the apps work. Right now I need to know what open office portable needs to run. Like specifically the files it imports from Windows so I can add these to my winpe build.

PE3 is awesome. In theory you should be able to create a full windows install that will run portably on any machine. This is not my goal. I just want a quick loading portable OS that I can run a few key apps on.

Hi,

My name is Nuno, I'm one of the developers at the WinBuilder project.

To add applications inside Windows PE 1/2/3/x we use a type of scripts called "app scripts".

They basically define the required registry entries, dependencies and the such that are required to run a given program under a very slim Windows environment, they are described here: http://winbuilder.net/help/scripts/script_application.html or you can check some real-world examples at http://livexp.boot-land.net/LiveXP/Apps/HD%20Tasks/Diagnostic/

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Recently, we've began to revise our app scripts. One of the ideas is that we should use app scripts to become a bridge between Windows PE and PortableApps since this way we don't need to reinvent the wheel.

This is a good match since portable apps are tested under a "normal" windows environment while app scripts can fill in the gaps to add the missing dependencies that are required on Windows PE operative systems.

This way, at winbuilder we can simply code portableapps and share them with others around here or also use them in our projects where we both can share and contribute to a larger repository of available programs.

App scripts will be used as wrappers to ensure that a given portableApp can also run on Windows PE without trouble.

Once I get more news on this development, I'll say something.

This is just a heads up to let you guys know that we're already looking into this matter very seriously.

If anyone also wants to volunteer and join so that we can get this done faster, just drop me a message.

i make with Qemu win xp portable, looks like a PA app

What about using something along the lines of Windows Mobile? I've seen it utilized in MP3 players so I would imagine something like that could be used.

http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html
ReactOS is an open-source attempt at making a free Windows. It's come far enough that you should be able to run most applications, though I have yet to test this myself. In the downloads page there is a prepackaged QEMU download, which I have tried, and it worked decently well. ReactOS also got an update yesterday, so it looks like I get to try that one.