Unable to install Windows XP on Pen-Drive

Question

When I tried to install Windows XP on a Removable disk like Pen-Drive it says Windows cannot be installed on Removable Disks. Why cant I install XP on my Pendrive

Answer 1

eHow: How to Make a Bootable USB in Windows XP.
^{That gives a short summary of steps and references three other articles,}

1. BayWolf: How to Create a bootable USB Memory Key
2. Microsoft: How to Create a Bootable Floppy Disk for an NTFS or FAT Partition in Windows XP
   ^{Microsoft Knowledge Base 305595}
3. Tech Republic: SolutionBase: Boot Windows XP from a USB Flash Drive
   ^{this is already linked in another answer here}

These tools are typically referred,

1. HP USB Disk Storage Format tool
2. Bart's PreInstalled Environment (BartPE)

Answer 2

I found this TechRepublic article helpful: Boot Windows XP from a USB flash drive.

Answer 3

i use a free tool called Novicorp WinToFlash which you can download from here: http://wintoflash.com/home/en/

Answer 4

The reason you can't is that Microsoft programmaticly blocked it in the install disc. It's against the EULA to use that copy of Windows on more than one computer.

That said, you can in fact hack the disc to create a PE (Preinstalled Environment). This is basically a read-only version of Windows meant for sysadmin'ing stuff.