Install and run from thumb drive?
in [Windows XP]
|
From: Ed from AZ on 9 Aug 2010 10:49 I've got an older desk top with an aging hard drive that has a bad whine. This machine is used for a very limited application, and is fine for that use - except for the noise. Can XP SP2 install and run from a thumb drive? THe idea is to tel the machine to boot from the thumb drive and run the OS and a couple of programs from there. No hard drive, no whine. Good idea or bad? Ed
From: Bruce Hagen on 9 Aug 2010 11:06 "Ed from AZ" <prof_ofwhat(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message news:596211d8-52ab-485a-95fe-e2be393711bb(a)q21g2000prm.googlegroups.com... > I've got an older desk top with an aging hard drive that has a bad > whine. This machine is used for a very limited application, and is > fine for that use - except for the noise. > > Can XP SP2 install and run from a thumb drive? THe idea is to tel the > machine to boot from the thumb drive and run the OS and a couple of > programs from there. No hard drive, no whine. > > Good idea or bad? > Ed I don't know about your question, but hard drives don't usually whine. I would be giving the fans a super good cleaning out. Remove them if you can and get some 'Air In A Can' to blow them out. Even if they look clean, they may well be plugged up internally where you can't see. -- Bruce Hagen MS-MVP [Mail] Imperial Beach, CA
From: LVTravel on 9 Aug 2010 11:45 "Ed from AZ" <prof_ofwhat(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message news:596211d8-52ab-485a-95fe-e2be393711bb(a)q21g2000prm.googlegroups.com... > I've got an older desk top with an aging hard drive that has a bad > whine. This machine is used for a very limited application, and is > fine for that use - except for the noise. > > Can XP SP2 install and run from a thumb drive? THe idea is to tel the > machine to boot from the thumb drive and run the OS and a couple of > programs from there. No hard drive, no whine. > > Good idea or bad? > Ed Windows XP and any other later operating systems are designed to NOT be able to be installed onto a USB external device. The installation will fail as soon as the removable media is detected. There has been some reports that people have hacked the OS to be able to do this but no one has successfully posted anything about it. There are other operating systems, Linux specifically and all it's offshoots, that can be booted from a USB device and there are open source programs that will read and write to Office standards. The issue you may run into with this type of setup is that USB key devices (thumb drive) has a finite lifetime in number of read/write cycles they will do. They can fail at any time and often do.
From: Mark Adams on 9 Aug 2010 12:04 "Ed from AZ" wrote: > I've got an older desk top with an aging hard drive that has a bad > whine. This machine is used for a very limited application, and is > fine for that use - except for the noise. > > Can XP SP2 install and run from a thumb drive? THe idea is to tel the > machine to boot from the thumb drive and run the OS and a couple of > programs from there. No hard drive, no whine. > > Good idea or bad? > Ed > . > Bad idea. XP is not designed to run from a USB device, not to mention your older hardware may not even be capable of booting from USB. Buy a new hard drive and clone the OS to the new drive. If you are really concerned about noise, buy a solid state hard drive; no moving parts.
From: Db on 9 Aug 2010 15:03
yes, you can boot with a thumb drive, however I don't know about running programs with the o.s. on the thumb drive. it would make sense that you can't because all the programs you have have been integrated with the o.s. on the hd. but if you want to have some fun loading the o.s. from the thumb drive, you will need to install 2 programs on the thumb drive. I don't remember what exactly the do. I think 1 program formats/prepares the thumb drive. then the next one installs a boot mgr. if I recall the 2 programs can be downloaded from the hewit packer website. -- -- db���`�...�><)))�> DatabaseBen, Retired Professional ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This NNTP newsgroup is evolving to: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx "Ed from AZ" <prof_ofwhat(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message news:596211d8-52ab-485a-95fe-e2be393711bb(a)q21g2000prm.googlegroups.com... > I've got an older desk top with an aging hard drive that has a bad > whine. This machine is used for a very limited application, and is > fine for that use - except for the noise. > > Can XP SP2 install and run from a thumb drive? THe idea is to tel the > machine to boot from the thumb drive and run the OS and a couple of > programs from there. No hard drive, no whine. > > Good idea or bad? > Ed |