Ever needed a quick to boot operating system, that you could take with you wherever you went? Admittedly, most people don’t find themselves in the kind of situation where they might, but if there’s anything I’ve learned over years of troubleshooting Windows or virus attacks, is that you can never be too prepared. SSD’s are becoming the new standard in both home desktops and business applications, and now that Windows has started to gear their architecture and updates towards running off of flash memory, rather than traditional hardware, it’s becoming easier than ever to emulate their operating system off of anything with a few spare gigs and a stable file system to sit on top of.

BartPE

    The first step in this process is going to involve getting a suitable thumb drive, and anything 2 gigs or above will usually do fine. Plug the adapter into your computer, and once it has shown up in your drives list, right click and choose the option to “Format”. When prompted, choose the “FAT32” filesystem, and hit OK. After this you’ll want to go here to get a copy of PEBuilder, a bootable filesytem that allows multiple operating systems to run off of it, including Linux and OSX. Once installed, BartPE will ask you for your windows files.

Windows XP 

    In order to run this copy of Windows from the USB stick, you will need to have either the Windows XP disc with SP2 pre-installed, or install Windows XP, upgrade to SP2, and use the files from this installation. Once the disc is recognized or the update to SP2 is finished, navigate to the root Windows file and find the folder labeled “i386”. Copy this folder into a new portion of your hard drive, and when that is finished, point BartPE to this file when it asks for the necessary Windows components.

Installation

    After that, BartPE will do all the work, and within minutes you’ll have a fully operational and bootable version of Windows XP with you on your keychain! Keep in mind, it is a very barebones system when installed flat like I have described above, but if you want to add extra applications and capabilities to this flash-based build, you can find an entire repository of slimmed down versions of your favorite programs listed here. The LiveXP community is constantly finding new ways to run software on the backs of small portable drives like these, and there is no shortage of ingenuity from the programmers behind it all.

Whether troubleshooting a problem at Grandma’s house, or trying to recover a file quickly and easily after a system crash, there are many advantages to having XP on the go. Rumor has it that Microsoft will be streamlining this entire process for the release of Windows 8, pairing the hardcopy with a fresh out of the box “lite” version for administrative use, but how exactly the system will work, how much space it will need, or what features will be included, at least at its full potential, remains to be seen.

Post your comment

Submit