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Run any app off a USB drive ?

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wonkotheinsane

New Member
Joined
Aug 3, 2010
Messages
3
Hey, guys, do you have the experience of running your daily used apps off a USB drive?

Which is I am now trying to do. But I find that only portable apps can be run like that.

while some apps like MS office are not portably available. How can I do that?
 
I'm not sure if you're kidding or not. My guess is that you don't know that USB is not available on older computers and that we mostly discuss older stuff here. :)

If you're serious about running apps on a flash drive there are lots of sites that deal with that. However if it's not going to be bootable, I don't see the point in putting only apps there.

Mods: Delete this post along with the thread if you think the OP is non-genuine.
 
Ole Juul said:
I'm not sure if you're kidding or not. My guess is that you don't know that USB is not available on older computers and that we mostly discuss older stuff here. :)
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To his credit, he DID post in the "Off Topic" forum. And it's not to say that none of us EVER use newer technology. :p


Mods: Delete this post along with the thread if you think the OP is non-genuine.
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Well he's not selling anything, I think he's legit.

But yeah -- I don't know anything about running complex, registry-tied apps like MS Office from USB. My first instinct would say it can't be done (as MS Office installs 'so much crap' into Windows, e.g. DLLs, runtimes, registry keys, etc. etc. etc), at least not without a surrogate "support installer" to install all of that. And then at that point I'm pretty sure you're in clear violation of the EULA, which generally regulates the install to one specific computer, only only that one specific computer.

Of course, not that EULAs ever stopped me from trying something like that "just for fun"...
 
I know quite a bit about this and ironically just went on a portable app adventure myself.

The apps like MS Office that needs registry entries and such can be portablized by software like Thinstall, which got bought by VMWare and is now called ThinApp.

There's also software like Molebox that virtualizes a registry and such.
 
southbird said:
To his credit, he DID post in the "Off Topic" forum. And it's not to say that none of us EVER use newer technology. :p
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No, he didn't. I moved the thread, and there is an expiring redirect from the original area where it was posted.

When people make a first post like this and can't get the area right it smells like spam.
 
See the website PortableApps, it's a repository of modified to run-from-USB (or even read-only devices like CD-ROM,) apps.

Among them: OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird. There's even an auto-start launcher. (Aka: when you plug in the USB stick, it pops up a launcher for you.)

I can't find any reference to anyone successfully getting Microsoft Office to work that way.
 
@southbird: I understand where you're coming from. It is a good idea to give people a bit of slack and make sure they know they are welcome. That is why I answered in the first place, just to make sure, even though I didn't have much to offer. :)

That said, the post is typical of spam in subject mater and it is not at all clear if the poster has anything to sell or not. A common technique is to post first and come back a day or two later and edit - typically adding a link to the post or even just the profile which on some forums is picked up by Google.

Since the person hasn't come back yet, I think we'll see this end as a spam attempt - perhaps thwarted. Too bad, because it sounds like Raven might be a good source of information - for someone that actually wants it that is. :)
 
Absolutely a bot. If you search on Google for the full phrase "do you have the experience of running your daily used apps off a USB drive", you get at least three hits on other forums than the Vintage Computer Forum. My rule of thumb is that if a brand new user asks a question that appears verbatim on more than one other website in the whole world, it is usually proof the user is a bot. We'll see if another bot will join in a few days to post an answer containing inlined links to commercial services.

Actually the Google hits even lets us know which service the spammer will advertise. It is a company whose name is a combination of what you should do to God and a brand of screen cleaning wipes. And no, the first part is not "sacrifice". :-D
 
Well, spammer aside it's almost an interesting post and topic. I used to really desire to run my bbs from a usb stick. Not sure why but I guess having my bbs and tradewars universe attached to my neck stoked my younger side's god complex. Only thing cooler of course would be having it run on a system that small. Then you jack in whenever you want but the universe is still running/playing while you carry it.

It's interesting though and good for some beginners to see this and understand why something like that wouldn't work so you couldn't just take office x to a friends computer and run your copy from a drive.
 
Sure. In times of vintage computers, many would run their "apps" off a floppy disk. In particular if your computer didn't have a hard drive to install it onto. For what it is worth, a USB drive today is the modern replacement for a floppy disk, with the exception it is so large that you can fit a medium sized operating system, applications and documents onto it.

Anyway, making a USB drive bootable is no rocket science. I'm sure several of us - me included - have installed and run a modern operating system entirely on Flash based media. For example my Mini-ITX computer boots Linux from a 4 GB USB stick. In that case starting programs from USB or not is not an issue, since the whole system runs from USB without you need to worry about it.
 
I used to carry a floppy around with my favourite DOS diagnostics and miscellaneous utilities. I'm with carlsson, make it bootable. With the size of flash drives it seems like a better idea to have your whole OS set up just the way you like it. Of course if the target computer cannot be rebooted, then having just apps really does make sense. One could also put the apps on the net and have access that way. In a way that's how the repositories work.

I suppose in the end it's a Windows thing because with Linux and BSD you just install and uninstall whatever you want, whenever you want. In general, all the apps are available on whatever machine you're using. That's the beauty of the PC instead of having a centrally administered system.
 
Carlsson is right. And I ask in other forums the same question and I do it for promoting.

However, as a lot of you seem very interested in this topic. So I will not post my product or link to destroy this kind of atmosphere.

But please allow me to make some investigations.

Will you be interested in an virtual operating system that runs off a USB drive? This system has almost the same interface with Windos OS. On this virtual operating system you will be able to install and run almost any apps including MS office. Besides, you keep all you setting, bookmarks on it.

Technically, It has its own registry, so everything you do will be on that USB drive but not on the host computer to which the USB drive is connected.

Ok, you may already know it is my product. So I am just wondering, do you find this kind of thing useful? or will you considering buying it? What do you expect from this kind of product?

As I said, I will never post my product here, unless requested. You can just consider it as an easy talking on running app off a USB drive or something about virtual system.

continue ! guys! :p
 
Holy Poop Logs!!!! *pardon* The spammer talks!!! And it even respects the forum, a rather admirable poster really, but i would recommend not advertising a product like that on a forum like this, it is rather out of sorts. But in this case i DID start an interesting discussion. But still, i would rather not see spams in the forums, detracts from the overall helpfulness of it..

But, wonkotheinsane i give you some credit for coming forward, admitting your advertising for a product, analyzing the response, and NOT posting and links or spams.
 
With all due respect to wonkotheinsane, your original question, I believe, referred to running applications from a USB pen drive. One would assume that your Windows system was already booted from its hard drive and you had only the application to be run on the pen drive.

Now, booting an operating system from a pen drive is a different matter--and a much simpler In fact, you can get Windows to boot from a pen drive. There are several Linux distros that will boot just fine from a USB flash drive. Add WINE and you're probably in business for most Windoze apps.

There's lots on the web on how to do either.

It's more difficult (but I assume, not impossible) to do what you initially asked.
 
More to the point; while all of us probably use modern computers daily, this forum in particular caters to vintage computers which is a subject of constant discussion what to include or not. The general consensus is that 15-20 years old computers is the newest stuff worth discussing, and while USB began to appear 15 years ago, it is borderline vintage and thus beyond the scope of the forum. Yes, we have this off-topic area for other kinds of discussions, but it is not intended for massive amounts of postings.

Back when the kind of computers we collect and love to use were in fashion, user settings most probably were saved in plain text files which you with ease could copy along. Sometimes perhaps the files were binary, but still one file per software package rather than a database or registry where everything goes. Sure, some programs might install custom libraries in system folders which would complicate matters, so the product people like us really might want are virtual library folders and automatic path assignments. Now that usually isn't rocket science, just a matter of a batch script to set up environment variables.
 
I kind of miss the old DOS and old Mac OS programs that would install in a directory with all their needed files (and default to saving data there as well) you could just drag and copy that directory to any media and run it from anywhere (as long as your computer had the correct OS booted).

These days files and registry information is scattered all over the place and programs default to saving your documents in specific folders. Clicking on a document will not bring up the app that made it unless that app was installed on that computer.

As far as the original spammers question would I buy a USB stick with a bootable windows like OS pre loaded and then install my apps and files onto it? Hell no. Its too easy to hack a program into that that will send my files to some server on the net, or keylog my secure sites like paypal,etc. Why would I need a different OS/app combo on a USB stick that needs another computer to function I have laptops to drag around as needed?
 
Unknown_K said:
I kind of miss the old DOS and old Mac OS programs that would install in a directory with all their needed files (and default to saving data there as well) you could just drag and copy that directory to any media and run it from anywhere (as long as your computer had the correct OS booted).
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At the same time, I kind of understand the need for DLLs / Shared Objects / etc. In the "old DOS" world, TCP/IP had to be implemented into every program, for example. Every program shipped with its own copy of the C runtime (or whatever backbone it used.) Every program may have accessed the system in its own unique way, some more compatible than others. While it's great to be able to just "Copy and Run", the ability to share memory, disk space, and OS services is something I think is an important development.

That's not to say I agree with the Windows registry as an ideal central storage; it's a pretty disgusting example of data structures gone out of control. :D
 
I like DOS, and mostly because I am the one who determines where everything goes and how it hangs together. I will never have that same feeling of ownership with Linux. It's just really, really, messy, and that irritates me no end. :)

Speaking of ownership. If I understand correctly, the original post in this thread is about, and only relevant to, MS-Windows which is a STRONGLY licensed product. The suggestion of making Microsoft Office portable is presumably aimed at people who refuse to pay for an extra licence - or perhaps didn't even pay in the first place. In my view, not only is this subject not a favoured one in "General Off Topic", but since it appears to promote pirating of software perhaps shouldn't be here at all.
 
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