taj

Hi everyone, I was wondering if any of you have tried to boot Windows XP from a USB Storage Device? I am not talking about BartPE, but a full version of Windows XP. It seems it is possible, but is quite difficult (for me at least) and unpredictable - a lot seems to depend on your hardware setup and / or USB Storage Device. I have been following this thread at the 911CD Forums pretty much since it originated, and there over 1,500 posts in that thread, with numerous methods of how to achieve XP booting from USB and numerous reports of success and failure alike. I figured that some of you might be interested in this, or might have already been following this thread or a similar one elsewhere. I just wanted to get more of you involved, as the more brains working on this, the more can be achieved, and you never know, we might eventually get some instructions from Microsoft on how to attempt booting XP from USB... If you are able to boot XP from USB, please post what steps you took to achieve this, and your hardware setup. Thanks, - Taj

Following on from what Bezalel said: Try pressing F8 just before the Windows XP loading / splash screen comes up. This will bring up the Windows Advanced Boot Menu or something like that. Select Safe Mode (Minimal, without Network etc.) and see if you can logon or not once it's finished booting up. Hopefully you will be able to get access to your files, which I presume is what you want at this stage. I am not sure if this will work in your situation, but it worked for me when Windows wanted me to activate XP on a new installation but I did not have an internet connection or access to a phone at the time. - Taj

The link isn't working for me... 404 not found. -Taj

Not sure if you are aware of this, but anyway: Right click on the desktop and select 'Properties'. Go to the 'Screensaver' tab. Click on 'Power'. Go to the 'Advanced' tab. In the 'Power Buttons' section, you can choose to Hibernate your computer when you press the Power button or Sleep button. [Hibernate feature needs to be enabled for this to work!] -Taj

I reinstalled XP Pro SP2 yesterday using a UA disc. Straight away, without even logging in, I made an image using Acronis True Image. This way I hope I will never reinstall Windows again on this computer, even though I kind of enjoy it [ ] if I am really bored and have nothing else to do / or if there is a significant hardware change. The main thing that stops me reinstalling / restoring images frequently is that the computer is shared between 7 people, so I don't like messing with or having to setup their accounts / settings etc. all the time. Afterwards, I made an image after all the Windows Updates had been applied, drivers installed and major programs which I hope to restore whenever something even slightly goes wrong. There will always be a use for re-installing Windows [apart from killing time and boredom] despite the obvious advantages of disk imaging.

Gbarrows: Please remove your Office 2003 serial from the attached file MSTView.txt (if you can't, then a mod should do it)... - Taj

Thanks Ricktendo64! I've got a slipstreamed XP Pro SP2 disc. Think I might slipstream the latest updates / hotfixes now - thanks for the advice! I just did an XP Pro re-install yesterday for one of my family members, which went well. I do a re-install usually every 2 or 3 months, whenever I get the time. Yesterday I realised that after I had finished setting up the user account on the fresh XP install AND had run CCleaner, the User Profile size had grown to 2.34 GB! No documents in My Documents folder at all, yet still a User Profile of 2 GB on a completely fresh XP install!

System Restore has been turned off for ages [only use Acronis True Image for backups] and i use CCleaner more than once daily.

@ ricktendo64 I've got the User Hive Profile Service installed - does this make any difference in profile sizes - I thought it was to do with profiles unloading hives in the registry...please correct me if I'm wrong. @ TAiN I very occassionally use Adobe Photoshop CS2. I use lots of other programs but most of them are relatively small. The only major programs apart from Photoshop are Office 2003 Pro, Acronis True Image 9 and Acronis Disk Director 10. I use NOD32 [antivirus] and Zone Alarm Firewall. Other apps I use: Firefox, Nero 6 Ultra, Diskeeper 10. I use Outlook 2003, but my Personal Folder /.pst file is only 2.5 Mb so I can't see this making much of a difference. Thanks for all your help.

The whole Documents and Settings directory is on a separate partition (D:); XP is installed on the C: partition (this was done using the unattended setup option 'ProfilesDir'). pmshah, please clarify the default location of the 'temp' folder you are referring to... is it 'C:\WINDOWS\Temp' or 'D:\Documents and Settings\Taj\Local Settings\Temp'? Thanks for all your replies / help! Taj

I'm not a member of a domain. My Documents are not stored on a network share. This is the biggest confusion ;is the My Documents folder included in the user profile or not? I only keep shortcuts on my desktop. - Taj

Hi everyone, The size of my user profile is constantly changing, seemingly without me doing anything too drastic. For example, one day the size of my user profile is 3.27 GB, and then I reboot, login and it is down to 67.0 MB! What is causing these changes? I am not really in need of free hard drive space [250 GB drive], but I would like to know what is behind this. Also, I would be interested to know what XP determines as the user profile / how it determines the size of the profile. I am quite puzzled by this situation as I thought the user profile was everything in your User directory in Documents and Settings - however, I have over 25 GB in My Documents, so I presume this isn't included in the size of the user profile? [i am checking my user profile size using the following: System Properties > Advanced > User Profiels / Settings]. My account is part of the Administrators group, does this have any effect on the user profile size? Is anyone else having similar issues? I apologise for the long [first!] post with loads of questions, but I would be grateful if you could provide the answers / a solution. Thanks Taj