Windows To Go

usasma · Jun 18, 2012

I installed Windows To Go on a 32 gB SanDisk flash drive today.
I first booted it on a system at work (HP TouchSmart). I left it for a long time, and when I returned the system was in Win7. I suspect it was because I left it sit at the "Enter your Product ID" page for too long.

Rebooted and it worked well. Discovering the hardware took a while tho'
The next boot was smooth and fast - getting straight into Win8

Biggest issue was missing chipset and touchscreen drivers.

I used this article: http://arstechnica.com/business/201...-create-a-bootable-windows-8-usb-thumb-drive/

It has 2 errors in it.

First, when using Diskpart on the flash drive, it forgets to use "Active" to ensure that the partition is marked active.

Second, when making the disk bootable the typewritten command is wrong (but the screenshot is right). It's missing the \ in the d:windows part of the command. It'll give errors until you put the \ in.

usasma · Jun 23, 2012

I've been playing with Windows To Go for 5 days now.
It's a lot of fun, but it has it's limitations.

In particular, it can't do Windows Update and I'm having problems with touchscreen drivers.
I think this is due, in most part, to the drive being a removable drive.

I've tried to convert the drive to a fixed drive and it works OK - but it breaks the boot stuff in WinToGo (so I can't boot and I can't repair it).

It's just to fussy for me at this time - I'm calling the experiment off and relying upon Win8 on my desktop.

Temmu · Jun 26, 2012

cool. glad you're enjoying it!

lol! the biggest problem is touchscreen drivers!
and that is what ms is driving us nuts with - und you vill do touchscreen. ve have ways of making you do touchscreen. and they are not pleasant.

cluberti · Jun 26, 2012

Windows to go isn't meant to be used on typical USB media - there will be specific (basically an SSD inside a USB container with a USB plug) logo'd devices that will be supported for use under WTG. The drives that I've used that are actually WTG devices don't seem to have issues other than a Windows install would typically have - you have to inject needed drivers if Windows doesn't ship them. Not sure what your issues are with Windows Update, but perhaps I can help offline when you decide to give it another go :).

usasma · Jun 27, 2012

Thanks cluberti! I'm most likely going to wait for the release of the logo'd device.

Does the logo'd device identify itself as a local disk or a removable drive?
I was assuming that the reason that updates wouldn't install was that I was using a removable drive.
I tried a few "tricks" to fool it into making it a local drive instead - but that's where it became too much trouble to muck around with.

I never tried to slipstream the drivers into the .wim file that I used.

I had installed touchscreen drivers onto the stick (I thought) - but they didn't seem to load on the WTG drive - and they never seemed to work on the touchscreen system that I was using. I can't find any trace of them on the WTG stick that I'm using.

usasma · Sep 21, 2012

I'm baaaack!!!

Well, Windows To Go has matured - and here's some info on it's deployment from a TechNet Flash email that I got the other day:

http://technet.microsoft.com/librar...btfz_zYFCz&type=zrefz&media=zLibz&prod=zWin8z

Most interesting to me was the boot issues where the WTG boot can adapt to either UEFI or BIOS on the fly!
Roaming between firmware types: http://technet.microsoft.com/librar...pe=zrefz&media=zLibz&prod=zWin8z#stg_firmware

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Windows To Go

usasma

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usasma

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Temmu

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cluberti

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usasma

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usasma

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