Install Windows 7 onto USB stick?

[shaun88]

just out of curiosity, is it possible to install windows 7 onto a memory stick?
and if so does that mean if i plug it into any pc/laptop, set bios to read memory stick first then i could load this up as it would have my settings and programs on it?

 

[noidea_77]

Yes / no! Yes. you can install win7 onot an usb stick. No, it will not run as you want. First of all an usb stick is way to slow to run windows from it. Second your installation will only have the chipset drivers ans other properties for the installation system. Third thing is, that windows will ask for an activation every time you stick it in a different system until the key finally gets blocked by M$.

 

[shaun88]

Yes / no! Yes. you can install win7 onot an usb stick. No, it will not run as you want. First of all an usb stick is way to slow to run windows from it. Second your installation will only have the chipset drivers ans other properties for the installation system. Third thing is, that windows will ask for an activation every time you stick it in a different system until the key finally gets blocked by M$.

ah okays, thanks for your answer

 

[mister marmot]

Yes / no! Yes. you can install win7 onot an usb stick. No, it will not run as you want. First of all an usb stick is way to slow to run windows from it. Second your installation will only have the chipset drivers ans other properties for the installation system. Third thing is, that windows will ask for an activation every time you stick it in a different system until the key finally gets blocked by M$.

For people using internet searches and finding this answer, it is incorrect. Even at the time this answer was made, it was incorrect as iMortalZ had created a Windows 7 To Go installation for USB 2.0 thumb drives that had a large driver base to run from many machines.
I used that USB stick on at least 30 machines. The more closely related the machines were in hardware the shorter time it would need to go through hardware detection and it rarely got a driver based BSOD unlike swapping a hard drive into a new machine where you needed to delete drivers before the transfer or have a high chance at BSOD often from chipset driver differences.

Here is a guide on how to create a working Win 7 OS on a USB stick and there are other guides this one built upon.

Windows 8 USB installations are easier to make and support USB 3.0 ports natively. There is only one decent automatic tool that can do this so for (maybe I've missed some) but otherwise the steps are in several guides and even Microsoft has a guide on the Win8ToGo method.