winslow33
July 2nd, 2009, 16:16
...To run a full copy of Windows XP right from a 4GB thumb drive, complete with drivers, programs, and all. I've been working on this dream for about 3 months now with much sucess, and it's starting to look promising.
Now, It's came to me that XP wont work because it will try to take over the thumb drive it's installed on, and will probably crash. So I looked back a little and decided to test this on an older OS for now (obviously Vista would be too big to fit on a cheap flash drive). Windows 2000 and 98 probably would do the same thing. Windows 95 would be too old to have driver support for the modern computer hardware. This left me with one choice: WinNT 4.0. It can run somewhat on newer hardware (I test ran it on a hard drive in my spare newer model and it ran sufficently.), and after some research I found it can run many Windows XP programs because it shares many of the same technologies.
I've made Windows think that the USB flash drive I want to use is a hard drive, and even formated wit with NTFS file system (wasnt an option as a removable device). I did this so I can hopefully get NT Setup to think it's a hard drive so I can choose to install onto it.
Now I have one little problem standing in the way: The driver to make the flash drive look like a hard drive only works so long as I'm in Windows XP. So If I start the computer and boot from the CD like I'm supposed to, it will detect it as a thumb drive again and it wont show on the list when I'm prompted to choose a drive to install on. And if I begin installation from Windows, it'll make me restart before actaully begining to install so I'll end up with the same problem.
Being that I'm not installing onto the disk that I'm running XP off of now, rather a secondary hard drive (or so the computer thinks it is), I dont see why it cant install from Windows. Can anyone think of a way to get around this?
I'm fairly sure I can run NT if I can figure out how to install now then I can test it.
I know how brizare this project must seem, I havnt seen a similar idea on the internet anywhere. Closest thing is a mini- XP with almost no features and usefullness.
Now, It's came to me that XP wont work because it will try to take over the thumb drive it's installed on, and will probably crash. So I looked back a little and decided to test this on an older OS for now (obviously Vista would be too big to fit on a cheap flash drive). Windows 2000 and 98 probably would do the same thing. Windows 95 would be too old to have driver support for the modern computer hardware. This left me with one choice: WinNT 4.0. It can run somewhat on newer hardware (I test ran it on a hard drive in my spare newer model and it ran sufficently.), and after some research I found it can run many Windows XP programs because it shares many of the same technologies.
I've made Windows think that the USB flash drive I want to use is a hard drive, and even formated wit with NTFS file system (wasnt an option as a removable device). I did this so I can hopefully get NT Setup to think it's a hard drive so I can choose to install onto it.
Now I have one little problem standing in the way: The driver to make the flash drive look like a hard drive only works so long as I'm in Windows XP. So If I start the computer and boot from the CD like I'm supposed to, it will detect it as a thumb drive again and it wont show on the list when I'm prompted to choose a drive to install on. And if I begin installation from Windows, it'll make me restart before actaully begining to install so I'll end up with the same problem.
Being that I'm not installing onto the disk that I'm running XP off of now, rather a secondary hard drive (or so the computer thinks it is), I dont see why it cant install from Windows. Can anyone think of a way to get around this?
I'm fairly sure I can run NT if I can figure out how to install now then I can test it.
I know how brizare this project must seem, I havnt seen a similar idea on the internet anywhere. Closest thing is a mini- XP with almost no features and usefullness.