how to install xp on an 8gb stick?

i want to install xp on my 8gb flash drive through my sony vaio fz190 and i was ondering what are the steps i need to do this. specifically installing it onto the flash drive and not the hard drive. the idea is that i want to boot from the flash drive. thx for your help.

 

Booting from the USB port will be very very slow...

 

Start the Xp setup using your bootable CD.... Then plug in your USB drive and while choosing the partition to install Xp - your USB drive will also be listed and there you can install it I guess.... I am not sure about this technique though.....

 

Even if you can install it with your stick, the boot portion of XP still have to reside in the first internal drive of your computer. You can (theoretically) install the rest of the OS in any external drive but the boot portion still have to be installed in the internal drive.

 

what about if i use an external hdd because i replaced the original hdd on my laptop and i dont want any of it to be affected by xp and i want it to be seperatefrom the rest. would this work?

 

Still, the boot portion has to be installed in the first internal HD. This is the OS limitation. The boot portion is a tiny portion of the OS (less than 5MB I think) but it needs that to boot.

Note that installing Windows into external drive is not guaranteed to work. Last time, I tried, XP let me install the boot portion in my blank C drive and the rest in the external drive. But once it boot, it gave me BSOD. I didn't bother to fix it.

ftp://ftp2.avanquest.com/pub/documentation/SystemCommander/OSWizard.pdf

NT/2000/XP/2003 and Vista must boot from a primary partition on the first drive. Most of the non-boot portion can be located on any partition or drive.

 

I think that if you disable your internal hard drive or temporarily remove it and install Xp on your stick it will install the boot portion as well on the USB....

 

dunno if this will help, but you can simply download Windows XP Live USB Edition 2007 v2.02

It's only a 57MB file, and gives you the functions of XP from any USB stick....

http://www.afilehosting.com/download.php?id=795E52EA1