Windows 10: Physical Windows 2 Go USB as a VM via USB redirection

Hi folks

Thanks @NavyLCDR for supplying a Free method for getting a Windows system to work perfectly as a USB device.
In KVM you can use the USB as a physical USB and boot from it - so You've got essentially a "Clone" of your Windows system with all the Native Windows drivers.

Note though to make Graphics work "Natively" you will need to "pass thru" a graphics port or your graphics driver will still be the "Virtualised one" that Windows picks up - in some cases you might just be left with a blank screen. You should also enable the "Virtualised" network drivers for full network connectivity. You can "Inject" the Virtio graphic drivers to your Windows system if there's a problem with graphics -- boot up "Native", mount the vio drivers iso (get from the fedora site) and run the install.

I'm using a USBC / USB 3.1 Nvme adapter and it works perfectly !! - This type of approach is good also if you don't have a huge amount of spare storage (HDD/SSD) and want to try out various versions of Windows -- By doing this type of thing you are essentially running your Windows system on "Bare Metal" avoiding any HOST OS overhead.

I'm not sure whether VBOX or VMWare allows direct boot of physical USB devices - but KVM does. Not sure about HYPER-V either - perhaps someone experienced with HYPER-V could answer if a VM on HYPER-V can boot from a physical USB device.

(Reasons for doing this - to avoid "Dual booting", saves creating Windows VM images, and also you can run concurrent physical VM's too if your hardware is powerful enough to do it - so this isn't IMO as bonkers as it seems).

As a VM it also avoids having to be re-activated if moved to different machines - I've had this running on both INTEL and AMD processor systems.

Here's W2K19 server cludged a bit to function as a workstation running as a physical W2GO USB machine on KVM/QEMU. Working perfectly and fast !! (actually faster than my Native W10 system !!!) - W2K19 server though is really "Mean and Lean" compared with the consumer versions of Windows..





Cheers
jimbo

:)

 

Physical Windows 2 Go USB as a VM via USB redirection

Hi folks

Thanks @NavyLCDR for supplying a Free method for getting a Windows system to work perfectly as a USB device.
In KVM you can use the USB as a physical USB and boot from it - so You've got essentially a "Clone" of your Windows system with all the Native Windows drivers.

Note though to make Graphics work "Natively" you will need to "pass thru" a graphics port or your graphics driver will still be the "Virtualised one" that Windows picks up - in some cases you might just be left with a blank screen. You should also enable the "Virtualised" network drivers for full network connectivity. You can "Inject" the Virtio graphic drivers to your Windows system if there's a problem with graphics -- boot up "Native", mount the vio drivers iso (get from the fedora site) and run the install.

I'm using a USBC / USB 3.1 Nvme adapter and it works perfectly !! - This type of approach is good also if you don't have a huge amount of spare storage (HDD/SSD) and want to try out various versions of Windows -- By doing this type of thing you are essentially running your Windows system on "Bare Metal" avoiding any HOST OS overhead.

I'm not sure whether VBOX or VMWare allows direct boot of physical USB devices - but KVM does. Not sure about HYPER-V either - perhaps someone experienced with HYPER-V could answer if a VM on HYPER-V can boot from a physical USB device.

(Reasons for doing this - to avoid "Dual booting", saves creating Windows VM images, and also you can run concurrent physical VM's too if your hardware is powerful enough to do it - so this isn't IMO as bonkers as it seems).

As a VM it also avoids having to be re-activated if moved to different machines - I've had this running on both INTEL and AMD processor systems.

Here's W2K19 server cludged a bit to function as a workstation running as a physical W2GO USB machine on KVM/QEMU. Working perfectly and fast !! (actually faster than my Native W10 system !!!) - W2K19 server though is really "Mean and Lean" compared with the consumer versions of Windows..





Cheers
jimbo

 

Installing windows off of a USB stick

Step By Step from vista:
From admin cmd prompt

1. diskpart
1a. list disk
2. select disk 1 (replace 1 with your usb drive)
3. clean
4. create partition primary
5. select partition 1 (replace 1 with your usb drive)
6. active
7. format fs=fat32
8. assign
9. exit

Copy Windows Vista's DVD ROM content to the Flash Drive

xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\ (d being your vista cd and e being your usb stick)

And that's it, boot off your usb disk

 

Multi-bootable USB

Hey guys from TPU, couldn't find any specific thread pertaining to the question asked on title. As mentioned, I'm trying to create a bootable USB, but with many specifics boots available.

I've been trying to create one with multiple boot device including one that enables me to run Windows 10 directly on the USB Thumb Drive but to no avail.

The list of bootable images i'm trying to create are

1. Windows 10 (A full OS running from thumb drive)
2. Windows 10 ISO (Bootable disk image for fresh install)
3. MemTest86+

Have tried YUMI or UUI from the website USB PenDrive Linux but as this is my first time, i don't know how am i screwing up or am doing it right.. Anyone got a rough idea on a step by step guide? Thanks!