Windows Embedded Standard 7 installation.

alphanumeric said:

It would be interesting to see if you can do it, but I don't think its practical. Each PC would require different drivers, and what about activation? Its been done on windows XP but from what I remember its a fair bit of work to pull it off. You have to modify some files etc, and even when you get it to work, performance is really bad. I would think a thumb drive would be even worse than an external USB hard drive. I don't think thumb drives (flash memeory) like lots of writes so eventually your thumb drive will go bad.

I'm curious about this too, maybe this poster could elaborate more on the subject.

Create VHD on flash drive?

alphanumeric said:

It would be interesting to see if you can do it, but I don't think its practical. Each PC would require different drivers, and what about activation? Its been done on windows XP but from what I remember its a fair bit of work to pull it off. You have to modify some files etc, and even when you get it to work, performance is really bad. I would think a thumb drive would be even worse than an external USB hard drive. I don't think thumb drives (flash memeory) like lots of writes so eventually your thumb drive will go bad.

That is true about the drivers, I'll have to see if Windows can load up some generic working drivers. Hopefully it will.

It seems as though WES7 will allow usage on multiple puters because its license allows so. Actually, running Windows off a flash drive sounds atrocious, but one time, I put a VMware virtual hard drive file onto a flash drive and booted from that, it's not too shabby honestly. I think I set the system to use one processor core and I think either 256 or 512 MBs of RAM and it ran rather fine. Also, Windows Embedded is basically Windows 7 but stripped down, just think of it as a linux Windows.

derekimo said:

alphanumeric said:

It would be interesting to see if you can do it, but I don't think its practical. Each PC would require different drivers, and what about activation? Its been done on windows XP but from what I remember its a fair bit of work to pull it off. You have to modify some files etc, and even when you get it to work, performance is really bad. I would think a thumb drive would be even worse than an external USB hard drive. I don't think thumb drives (flash memeory) like lots of writes so eventually your thumb drive will go bad.

I'm curious about this too, maybe this poster could elaborate more on the subject.

Create VHD on flash drive?

What would you like to know?

Coke Robot said:

derekimo said:

alphanumeric said:

It would be interesting to see if you can do it, but I don't think its practical. Each PC would require different drivers, and what about activation? Its been done on windows XP but from what I remember its a fair bit of work to pull it off. You have to modify some files etc, and even when you get it to work, performance is really bad. I would think a thumb drive would be even worse than an external USB hard drive. I don't think thumb drives (flash memeory) like lots of writes so eventually your thumb drive will go bad.

I'm curious about this too, maybe this poster could elaborate more on the subject.

Create VHD on flash drive?

What would you like to know?

I'm talking about the person who posted that it could be done in your other thread.

It would be nice to know more about how it is done.

derekimo said:

Coke Robot said:

derekimo said:

I'm curious about this too, maybe this poster could elaborate more on the subject.

Create VHD on flash drive?

What would you like to know?

I'm talking about the person who posted that it could be done in your other thread.

It would be nice to know more about how it is done.

Oh OK! I see! Yeah, I PM'd the poster to find out more, but I was thinking someone else here might know.

Coke Robot said:

derekimo said:

Coke Robot said:

What would you like to know?

I'm talking about the person who posted that it could be done in your other thread.

It would be nice to know more about how it is done.

Oh OK! I see! Yeah, I PM'd the poster to find out more, but I was thinking someone else here might know.

Looks pretty cool, I'd like to see it if it can be done.

It is going to be interesting to see how this pans out. I'd just like to state again that I don't have any experience with windows embedded so some of my assumptions may be way off base. YMMV :)

UPDATE!!

Ok, I got an answer from the poster from the VHD on flash thread about installing Embedded, apparently you must have the USB as the root of a network shared drive and before installing Windows, you run a couple commands to start the network stack and THEN install on the drive.

But before I got that message, I found out about this software hacker cracker dude that has achieved the USB Windows 7 drive. I downloaded the VHD file and ran the installer file for that and it installed onto the USB flash drive, and yes, it's Windows 7 on a flash drive that you can run from the BIOS boot! YAY!!!

Also, for those curious about if it's possible and how it runs, it actually run surprisingly well. But due to USB 2.0's speed constraints, it's not as fast as an ATA hard drive, but when running some light tasks, like going through Windows Explorer, running a media player and doing some interwebbing, it runs quite well. It almost seems like you're running on a slightly fragmented hard drive actually. Office 2010 runs pretty well, except for Outlook, it's a little unstable, but oh well. I plan on doing some Remote Desktopping from my portable Windows 7 drive to my home puter for gaming, maybe Outlook 2010, accessing installation files and whatnot, and using its internet resource. Awesome!!

But in my opinion, having Windows 7, IE 9, and Office 2010 to-go is epic! I don't have a pocket full of sunshine, I have a pocket full of Windows 7 Ultimate thank you very much!