Quick question about installing XP on a 2GB USB stick

Hey there

I've been reading around about installing XP and running it on a USB stick/USB HDD and I see that it can be done.

However as my laptop is in a dual boot config already with XP and has a boot menu where I select either Win 7 or XP I am wondering how I go about getting the laptop to recognise the XP instance on the USB stick.

Is it simply a matter of using BCDEDIT to add another option to the boot menu, that option being the USB stick?

Thanks in advance for any tips on this.

 

just boot from the usb flash drive and that's it.

 

Wait a minute. You want to INSTALL XP on a USB flash drive, that's 2GB? Is that even large enough?

 

Yes.. it's big enough for a customized version of xp.

 

Hmm, interesting. I still wouldn't recommend it though. What about Windows Updates and stuff?

 

The minimum requirements of XP pro is 1.5gb of free space. That is all.

Booting from USB drive has nothing to do with your boot menu / hard disk boot loader. You can not use the boot menu to start from a usb stick. You need to use the bios boot options and select USB as your boot device.

 

Ah right so I just stick the USB stick in and boot from it. And when I want to use Win 7 I just take out the USB stick and boot normally.

Thanks guys.

I actually intend to buy a USB HDD but want to try on a USB stick first as it's all I've got at the moment, I have a 4GB one as well but as I understand it you can only use 2GB ones. I will have a go and see what happens.

I just basically want to get rid of the XP instance on my laptop as I rarely use it now I have Win 7 installed but may still require it once in a blue moon (I have a couple of games which don't run nicely in Win 7, Oblivion and GTR Evolution to be precise, despite trying the usual tweaks to get them to work.) so having it on a USB stick/HDD I can just plug in when I want to use those games will be handy and it will save me the 50gb worth of main HDD space that the XP instance is currently using.

I have found this guide which I shall be following - http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176

So hopefully all will go well.

One slight issue that I notice is that I should disconnect my internal HDD to avoid the MBR being messed up. As I don't think I can do that on my laptop will that cause any issues? I will of course make a full backup with Acronis True Image beforehand but it'll be handy to know if I can proceed and not being able to disconnect my internal HDD won't cause a problem.

Thanks again for the advice.

 

Alright. Just one question though - won't the speed of the OS be limited by the bandwith of the USB connection?

 

Well from what I've been reading it shouldn't be too much different as long as the USB is 2.0.

 

I would be interested in XP on a USB stick. I wonder if you could put DOS on the USB stick first and boot into DOS (HP Utility) ? Would that stop your internal laptop hard disk MBR from being altered for XP ?

 

Dunno.

If the MBR is altered/messed up can I just restore from the Acronis Backup? Will that restore the MBR or have I got to use my Win 7 setup disk to repair the MBR?

 

Yes your Acronis Backup will restore the MBR. That is if it is a backup image. My MBR is part of my C drive image. Although if you are dual booting you will have to restore the partition with the MBR (or entire hard disk). As long as I restore my C Drive, the MBR is always replaced/restored with the MBR at the time the backup image was taken.

So if you are dual booting and backing up partitions individually, you will need to think/remember what the MBR contains.

Example
1. MBR = C(XP) only or
2. MBR = C(XP) and D(Vista).

So the image of the C Drive will have had to have been taken after Vista was installed on the D Drive (for the C Drive image MBR to have both XP and Vista in the MBR). If the C Drive image was taken before Vista was installed on the D Drive then the MBR on the C Drive would only contain the MBR for XP (therefore you would lose your boot entry in the MBR for Vista on D. This would allow you to delete Vista since the OS doesn't no it exists).

You do not have this problem if your image is of the whole hard disk when dual booting (the dual boot slightly complicates things when imaging individual partitions, depending when images were taken).

 

Oh well that's OK then.

As long as the MBR is also restored then that's fine.

I plan on making a full image of the entire HDD tomorrow, just before tinkering with the install of XP on the USB stick so it'll be a current image with all partitions accounted for.

I can remove the current XP instance from the partition on my internal HDD at a later date when I'm done installing XP to my USB stick/HDD.

 

BTW... you have to modify windows xp in order for it to boot from usb.

 

Yeah already done that. That's what the link I posted in post #7 covers.