Installing Windows 7 On USB

How can you do this? All the guides I find online are about making the USB into a Windows 7 Setup USB, not an actual operating system.

Well that is more or less how you do it on a usb.you put it on there and load from usb but the usb needs to be really big windows 7 is about 17g normal.

Damn... Why can't windows 7 be the size of linux XD

Possible? Yes. I think the real question is why? The performance of Win7 running from a flash drive will be incredibly slow to accomplish anything.

Well I'm fixing a computer that won't boot whatsoever, and I figured I would run windows 7 on another storage device, and repair it from within the OS. I was HOPING to avoid putting a hard drive into it just to do that, but it looks like I'll have to...

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

if you can't fix the booting problem, you can install a stripped down version of XP on the ram. it'll allow you to at least remove the files that you want to save if you plan on wiping the drive.

It's possible. I was looking into this a few months back. There's a lot of editing to be done to the actual windows ISO and it still may not work.

There were also pre-altered isos that weren't very well seeded, and programs to help automate altering the ISO but I can't find them now.

This guide is for XP, but i remember the steps for 7 being similar/identical.
http://www.techspot.com/community/topics/how-to-install-and-boot-windows-on-an-external-usb-hard-drive.116114/

Well from personal experience, I know its possible to do. As far as I know the Windows boot loader will not work in such a way, however you if you can get grub installed on the drive and have it chain load the windows boot loader, you should be golden.

I don't know enough about baseline grub configuration outside of simplified configurations to assist, but maybe it can offer a start for you to make it happen.

***... it sounds like it'd be simpler to just throw another hard drive in there that has windows on it...

Annnnd now the computer won't even turn on.. this is *** insane....

Alright I threw the corrupted hard drive into my computer - Is there a way to reinstall all the windows files? I'm doing sfc /scannow in CMD right now but I'm not so sure that's completely reliable, especially since I don't think it scans other harddrives XD

what you can do with the corrupted hdd in your pc is disconnect your main hdd and tell windows to boot from the install disk and then install on the corrupted hdd

i only recommend unplugging your personal hdd's to prevent acidently picking your own and formatting your pc but if your careful you can leave them all plugged in and pick the corrupted one in the windows 7 installer

Edit forgot to mention you will need to install all new drivers when you put it back into the other pc

If I install on the corrupted hard drive like you said, I'd lose all the personal files on it. That's something that I can't do, nor am I able to pull those files from the computer and do a reinstall that way (Not because of technological limitations, but because the person who's computer it is isn't available atm)

Basically what I'm looking for at this point is a way to reinstall all the boot/system files without losing the personal files.

Lol.
Windows 7 is about 4gb not 17....
Link
Or go download Windows 7 USB Tool or something it'll do it for you.

Windows Official Support actually gave me a definitive answer - Reinstalling the system/boot files isn't possible without a complete reinstall. Looks like I'll have to back up all the personal files and give it a clean slate

I missed this thread, did you ever get it working?

and that article isn't 100% accurate.

It depends on what is messed up.