Linux Live CD/USB.

I understand Jim, that sounds about right to me. I did this all myself also, so I'm not trying to discourage you, but just my experience is it's not worth it. You may have issues also, and will have to do it all over again. Get yourself a good USB but not of the Sandisk type, some of those don't work well, which ones I don't keep track of that. I also tried this on old hardware, and perhaps I should try it on newer stuff now that I have it. Though have read others with good hardware also don't like the speed. What I do is just quickly install the tools I need and do my testing with the Live Version, then lose it all upon shutdown. It's not the best way, but serves me well enough for now. Of course there are other Distros that will do the same with all the tools built in, I just have not tried them. I really should try some of these soon. Hiren's Boot CD looks very good, but seems to have too many tools, if that is possible.
I tend to boot Linux for a general hardware test, and if I need to test more things I will boot a different tool. Just a few days ago I booted linux to test a Monitor that was not working with Windows 7. Of course it did not work with Linux either, so I knew right away that the Monitor was indeed no good.

Hello, give this a try:

Use the YUMI installer to install the Linux Mint 17.1 iso on a USB3 thumb drive formatted in FAT32. During the installation, you will be able to add up to 4GB of persistence. Running any Linux flavor from a CD, DVD or USB2 thumb drive, or a USB3 drive in a USB2 slot is painfully slow. You need to use a USB3 thumb in a USB3 slot for acceptable performance. I find Mint 17.1 on a USB3 drive to be as fast as Windows7 on the same machine, and much nicer to look at. The install takes about twenty minutes, but then boots up in 10-15 seconds. I suggest Mint 17.1 Cinnamon as a user friendly Windows to Linux cross-over distro. A nice feature of YUMI is that it allows multi distros to be installed on a single USB drive.

BTW, some older machines can read USB thumbs but not boot from them.

Have fun. Hope this helps.

Thanks for that information. I need to get a USB3 flash drive and try this.

Right now you can get a 16GB USB 3.1 Sandisk flash drive at Best Buy for $7.99!
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sandisk...?skuId=6182915

A year ago , just of curiosity , I installed a Linux Mint on a USB - finding and following instructions in the net. Linux Mint comes with some preinstalled multiimedia drivers , the other needed for running the OS were find by the system updates. It worked fine on several PC's and laptops with Windows OS . All LAN , WiFi , video and multimedia drivers work fine. I could explore drives on machines I switched USB on and open all kinds of files.
All files I created could be saved on the USB drive - it was 32GB USB 2.0 and was enough. Booting was not very fast , but was OK.

mrjimphelps said:

Thanks for that information. I need to get a USB3 flash drive and try this.

Right now you can get a 16GB USB 3.1 Sandisk flash drive at Best Buy for $7.99!
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sandisk...?skuId=6182915

If I remember correctly those had a bad review percentage on some sites. I was going to get one also, tell me what you think of it.