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Today one of my friends asked me whether it is possible to install Windows XP on a USB drive so that it will boot Windows without bothering whether the computer do have Windows or not. So is it possible to do this?

If yes then how to do this?

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Jan 1 '11 at 15:37

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4 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

Yes, it certainly is possible, and you can install the full version of XP using this guide.

http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176

Will be slow depending on the quality and speed of the flash drive you use. It will also shorten the life of the flash drive drastically due to all the writes.

.

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Huh... this is pretty amazing. Question: What happens to the driver issue? If you plug it into multiple computers, does it work? (And what about driver letters?) – Mehrdad Jan 2 '11 at 21:57
Drivers is a whole other problem when wanting to use it on multiple hardware configurations, probably not a good idea, it will most likely corrupt the installation when you try to boot it on different hardware. – Moab Jan 2 '11 at 22:10
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up vote 3 down vote

For what you need, take a look at Bart's PE Environment.

I don't recommend that you actually install a complete version of XP on a flash drive because of driver problems when you use it on multiple computers; it seems like a PE version would be best for your needs.

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up vote 1 down vote

Lambert and Villintehaspam are absolutely correct - it is possible and Lambert points out the way I would do it, with BartPE. However! Your computer must support booting from USB mass storage devices (most computers that are fairly recent should do it, but it varies by BIOS). To check, go into your computers BIOS and in the boot options, see if there's an option to boot from USB (same place you would go to set "boot from CD" or "Boot from Floppy".

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up vote 0 down vote

Yes it is. Sort of at least: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Preinstallation_Environment

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