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Imagine having a good installation of Windows on your flash drive which can be used on any computer. You will have your personal Windows installation wherever you go.
Traditionally, people format their computer, install Windows operating system, followed by the drivers and lastly the applications. The whole process is executed pefectly will take anywhere between 90 to 150 minutes depending on the speed of the computer and the applications involved. It isn't a big deal as this installation is typically a "one-time" process. But, imagine going through the whole process every time Windows gets corrupted or one of your drivers get corrupted. It would seem overwhelming and discouraging to go through the installation process multiple times. Imagine installing everything once on a system and copying an image of the file system. The next time, the whole installation would consume the time to copy the files off the image. If the images reside in your pocket in the form of a flash drive, things would be as simple as they come. Tom's Hardware Guide published an article early September last year on creating an image on a flash drive. These are the requirements from the article - All that's needed is a bootable USB Flash drive with at least 256 MB of storage capacity and a Windows Setup CD. Using the program Bart PE Builder (Freeware), you can install Windows XP on the flash drive, along with other software as needed (and as available space permits). The article is an in-depth guide to installing Windows along with other free applications that are required on a day to day basis. Basically, the USB drive is formatted and connected to the computer to make it recognizable in the system BIOS. Service pack 2 is absolutely necessary for compacting the operating system on a USB flash drive. The program PE builder strips away all the non essential Windows components. The user is expected to install all the required softwares on his/her PC and move the installation files over to PE builder which would minimize the size of the installation files. The programs that the writer recommends are PE Builder, Nero Burning ROM, Ad-Aware SE Personal, Drive-Snapshot, Firefox, McAfee Stinger and Total Commander. After the applications are installed, broadband internet connection is enabled and configured. Lastly the installation of the actual operating sytem takes place. To load this operating system on the flash drive, the computer has to be booted on to the flash drive instead of the hard disk. Here are some advantages of having an operating system on a flash drive : 1. Virus Recognition and Elimination - If you hard disk has virus residing on it, you could easily detect and clean your hard disk by loading your flash Windows. 2. Backing Up System Files - Windows will not let you back up the system files that are in use. But, using this installation, you could back up all your system files. 3. File Rescue - You could use this installation to back up your files from a defective installation. It works great on systems that wouldn't load Windows anymore. 4. Hard Disk Repair - There are some native Windows components like chkdsk and scandisk that checks the validity of a hard disk and fixes bugs. All these can be done using the flash Windows. The list of uses can go on and on. This is definitely a must for all Windows machines. If you have any questions regarding this procedure, email us at pcs at suite101 dot com.
The copyright of the article Pocket Sized Windows in PC Software/OS is owned by Abhinav Kaiser. Permission to republish Pocket Sized Windows in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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