Comments on: How to Run Windows XP on a USB Drive

By: Arend Dittmer

Arend Dittmer — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:37:24 +0000

Yes, you do have to have the right to install VMware, VirtualBox or the integrated Virtual PC … having said this there are some key points you guys are missing:

1. If you just slap a vhd/vmdk on a usb and run the vm from the flash drive, performance is going to be awful … you will not be able to use it for productive use

2. If you boot from the stick chances are that you don’t have the right drivers on your ‘stick installation’ to support the hardware you are booting on. It will also be slow as write performance to flash drives is poor. And you will wear out the memory stick. The number of write/erase cycles is limited and Windows performs a ton of write ops. So rather sooner than later your flash drive will be unusable if you use this approach

MyPocketXP’s virtual hard drive configuration solves these issues by running a VM but taking advantage of faster local disk performance.

By: scott

scott — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:10:29 +0000

as always Chris your short on the important info..how big a usb chip… cost?? does it in fact work , how about a blank drive , or corrupt drive you need to fix for a friend,. as Amso puts it I remain unimpressed… everyone thought of this since the usb stick came out… but to date its still not really usable yet…

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 15:37:58 +0000

An exorbinate price for something you can yourself via BartPE a few other freebies and your own USB stick Directions for this project can be found at http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-pocket,1113.html.
Works like a charm.

By: Amos Brooks

Amos Brooks — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:32:23 +0000

I was REALLY psyched to see this until I saw that you need Window$ on the system to run it on the USB drive. It’s still interesting, but I’d rather be able to boot the OS from the BIOS like you can with Linux. So overall I remain unimpressed. Damn shame.

By: E. Douglas Jensen

E. Douglas Jensen — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:24:19 +0000

I would have expected you to be savy enough to note that no public PC allows software installs, so this device won’t work on the most common PC’s that people would want it to work on (hotels, etc.):

“When MyPocketXP is plugged-into a system it detects if Microsoft Virtual PC is already installed. If this is not the case the software can easily be installed through MyPocketXP’s launch menu.”