“Windows 8 build 7850.0.winmain_win8m1.100922-1508 contains a number of references to a brand new feature in Windows: Portable Workspaces. Microsoft will allow Enterprise customers to create USB storage driven copies of Windows. ‘Portable Workspace is a Windows feature that allows you to run Windows from a USB storage device’, notes Microsoft in its description of the feature inside Windows 8.” So, yeah, something we’ve been waiting for in Windows since, well, forever. Also, push notifications, a screenshot tool and a new webcam application have been discovered as well.
Does this let me boot Windows off a USB drive even if there is no Windows pre-installed on the computer, or does it only let you transfer your work environment from one Windows machine to another?
And will it also carry any extra drivers for any other hardware that might need it?
I think it’s probably going to use the bootable USB stack option from Windows Embedded 7.
I use the Windows 7 embedded version for a couple of utilities and some easy data recovery stuff… it moves from one piece of hardware to another pretty smoothly, although there are a few reboots or BSODs when moving from one chipset to another… intel to nvidia, etc… the basic drivers are mostly there and so long as windows has drivers for your NIC, windows update usually grabs the rest. I usually only have to install drivers manually for weird stuff, mostly different raid controllers.
Edited 2011-04-15 23:59 UTC
This isn’t intended as flame bait so I hope it’s not taken that way but why would you bother using Windows embedded for your recovery tools if you have to worry about graphics and chipset drivers?
There are hundreds of Linux recovery distros out there and the good think about Linux is very rarely do you need to load any additional drivers. Surely there must be at least one that fits your needs?
probably laziness on my part. Is there a quick alternative to chkdsk to repair an ntfs filesystem or check for bad blocks. how about accessing shadow copies or in the extremely irritating event that I run into a windows based software RAID, what’s the repair process from linux?
I actually do have usb installs in my desk for windows, linux and osx,, so it’s not a matter of trying to do all things with windows… it’s more of a pick the best(or, quickest) tool for the job thing.
I don’t know about him but I use an XP liveCD at the shop because it has the ability to use all the tools that Linux CAN’T, such as repairing the registry, activating system restore, etc. plus while there are AV programs that run on Linux they frankly suck, I’d much rather have my MalwareBytes along with Comodo and Stinger.
That said while the author “may have been waiting for this forever” he obviously isn’t much of a geek because we’ve had these things for..well forever. Before my XP Live I had one based on Win2K, and before that I had a cool Win98SE I ran on a CF card. It really isn’t hard, it is just a few reg tweaks and the like, and there are plenty of tutorials out there. Just look up “Make your own WinPE disc” and the same steps apply for USB, most will even tell you if there is anything you need to change for USB.
Personally I’ll stick with my LiveCD. by loading all of Windows into RAM it makes it fly for repair work, and if you need to surf from a possibly compromised machine you don’t have to worry thanks to it being read only media. CDs are cheap so I just update it every couple of months or so and voila! All I do is boot, run updates on the AVs, and I’m ready to work!
You can even make an XP gamer PC in a box if you want to spend the time, but having all the GPU drivers is a bit of a pain. I had a friend who did it back in the Win9x days to carry his games on CF between his parents which were living on opposite sides of the country. He was happy and it worked well for him. So it isn’t like it is that big a whoop, this just means you can call MSFT and somebody will support you…if you can stand the muzak on hold that long that is.
Yea, at less than 50MB for a basic WinXP system (MineField is -not- installed
), it do a great combo on a UBCD (ultimate boot cd). You can have both XP and and Linux on the SAME cd with hundreds of DOS floppy utilities.
Windows have its place in a system rescue toolkit. So does Linux and DOS.
Oh thumbs up on UBCD, it is a must have in every repair guy’s toolkit. It is a damned shame MSFT can’t learn a thing or two from the pirates and hackers, frankly they’d be better off for it. Not only do their system tools suck compared to UBCD, but the hackers have MUCH leaner and meaner version of Windows than even Embedded EVER dreamed!
Look up the numbers for “TinyXP TinyVista and Tiny7” to see for yourself. An XP that is fully patched and runs ALL the major software on 64Mb of RAM and is FAST? Vista and 7 on 512Mb of RAM on a 2Ghz P4 and is again FAST?
It is truly a shame they can’t learn from the hackers because I’ve tried both Embedded and Tiny and Tiny whoops the snot out of Embedded. You can even use it legally if you have a Windows pro License, just replace the hacked key with your key. Great for offices with older machines they’d rather keep or for gamers that want to squeeze every FPS they can out of the hardware.
Oh and you might want to look up “Ultimate Repair Toolkit V2” and see if you can find a copy. FOSS Zealots made them take it down (even though they were sharing full source) but it is a “one stop shop” for having a Swiss Army Knife on a 2Gb USB key. Full fixit tools for the registry, Winsock problems, virus and rogue AV removal, you name it it has it. Just update with the latest version of the programs it contains (you can even add your own easily to the built in menu) and away you go, everything you need to back up, clean, repair, etc. Add to a WinXP on USB stick and you have everything you could need in an easy to update form!!
Really…. will it work on another computer? Or you will be stuck to the computer you used to create the USB image (a la Windows-license-is-tied-to-the-computer-where-you-install-it kind of way)? And then if you increase the RAM of the computer it won’t boot at all because it’s a diferent computer?
you have no idea how any of that license technology works do you?
I have swapped out Hard drives, and motherboards, etc and never had a problem. One time I had gutted a machine and needed to call. I explained the issue and she said “no problem”, a few seconds latter she said “try activating now” and it worked.
modmans2ndcoming,
“I have swapped out Hard drives, and motherboards, etc and never had a problem. One time I had gutted a machine and needed to call. I explained the issue and she said ‘no problem’, a few seconds latter she said ‘try activating now’ and it worked.”
The rules are well documented, though not necessarily trivial.
WGA will let some modifications pass, other changes trigger a new activation. Depending on the actual changes, the time between reinstalls/mods, the presence of an OEM version and hardware, etc, MS may or may not permit you to activate automatically. For most people, they’ll just activate once. For techs who upgrade either their own systems or client systems frequently it’s a real nuisance which gets old very quickly.
Once I had to install MS Office on a number of computers without internet access, that was a horrible waste of time. I wonder if it would have been faster to physically take the computers to my house and activate them online…probably not, but for many people activation sucks. The only reason MS get away with it is because of the monopoly, otherwise there are so many instances of anti-features that MS would have crashed and burned a long time ago.
Welcome to 1999.
BartPE already offered this feature with XP.
Of course, being third party, it would never be condoned by MS, never the less, it was impressive. I believe they based it on the windows installation environment. Never the less, I was surprised when I was able to install and run all the usual windows applications off of a “windows live CD” without any trouble at all.
I don’t know if BartPE was able to do windows vista or 7 because of the new DRM in those kernels.
I bet pretty soon MS will invent the Live CD, too.
Windows 8’s new features … yawn.
Wow, they are so innovative … portable workspaces! USB booting! unbelievable …
Too bad others don’t follow this new, groovy trend!
There’s pretty high chance this will revolutionize the world!
Do other OSs have such function since – well – ages? Naaah …
Next we’ll see searching actually works, so the tireless efforts of the harddrive crunching indexer service will be put to good use, but will they make an effort in search? or just keep whining that google has a search monopoly which obviously prevents Microsoft doing anything useful with their shitty os. Doubt springs to mind.
In Windows 8, Google will index your HDD so that you can search your files at google.com =p
Edited 2011-04-16 09:04 UTC
The Windows Vista/Win7 search works great, but let me guess, you haven’t used Windows since Windows 2, but that’s what you heard.
I have used it and it sucks as much as Apple’s own implementation, both suck and I am an Apple Fan lol.
Edited 2011-04-16 18:14 UTC
lol, how does it suck? Compared to what?
and they may add an option to use different desktop environments, depending on you configuration, KDE, Gnome, Xfce …
You could already do that, but whatever.
Not really. Yes you can install something extra but it runs on top of the default DE and uses extra resources. In UNIX, if your computer can not run KDE or Gnome, you can replace them with LXDE or something lighter.
No, that is not true, all you need to do is replace the shell registray entry with an app or shell of your choice. It does not theme windows, but you can replace the entire shell with KDE for win, litestep, you name it.
I have even replaced it with Visual Studio, when I needed to get some work done, and didn’t want any distractions.
A theme does not mean the shell. If you want Windows to look like OS X, or XFCE, then please, use one of those. There is no advantage (especially with Windows 7) to replacing the WM.
Edited 2011-04-16 16:07 UTC
Well i remember that i tried a few years ago (when there was no kde port for windows) to replace my DE on windows xp and the only way was to install a alternative DE but that was something like a new DE running fullscreen (not a theme), so you where not able to remove the default DE on xp, like let’s say you have kubuntu and remove kde and replace it with gnome or xfce. And in the first message i wanted to say that ms would give users different DE in an official way, to make win 8 available for those who do not change their pc every time a new windows comes along.
You can change the shell, but why would you want to change the WM? If you change the WM, you lose Remote desktop, you lose compositing, you lose pretty much everything, they way Windows is written, the WM is Windows, it can’t be changed.
Why you would want to is beyond me anyway, if you want another WM, use something other than windows, the two are synonymous.
So when MS tries to bring features to their operating system that linux has it is a big yawn, meanwhile linux/mac os x users complain about how inferior Windows is because it lacks the features of linux.
Help me to understand the attitides? I suppose it is just “fun” to complain.
Speaking of which (linux)… I am in the process of downloading linuxmint-debian… has anyone else tried this distribution? It sounds like a great idea and has the patch that went into 2.6.38 for performance.
I use an earlier version of LMDE with Liquorix kernel for rehearsal recording. Excellent distro, I like it much better than Ubuntu.
Ahh. Interesting! I am going to burn the DVD later (download finished) and boot into it and check it out.
I guess it’s a bit underwhelming to see such run-of-the-mill features implemented and lauded as exciting, especially when they’ll require 16GB of space and would only be available to “enterprise” customers.
Im not sure why the winruomors site think that booting from USB would somehow improve documentation compatiblility though. That seems like a bit of a stretch.
There is that.
But I just meant that maybe the news itself is underwhelming, but when the lack of features people often complain about are (slowly but surely) being rectified, why complain about that?
I guess people aren’t really complaining about the features as much as about the (mild) hyperbole.
Well, aren’t ms being revolutionary now? I mean, nobody else has ever had support for running the entire os off of a USB drive, have they? What awesome features will they come up with next? Standard bluetooth drivers so we no longer have to muck about with manufacturer-specific crap? Keep them coming, Microsoft. The world is hanging on your every move.
All sarcasm aside, I like Windows 7 for the most part. There are, however, several areas where Windows just feels antiquated as compared to other oses. USB booting support is one of them, lack of standard bluetooth drivers is another.
Most all of the recent Macs can boot from a USB drive. In addition the newer machines come with an SD Card port. This makes it a snap to carry an SD card with a complete version of the OS and plenty of space for files and data. It also makes a debugging device, although I rarely need it for that purpose. Building a bootable system on an SD card is trivial. A class 10 SD card makes a pretty decent system “disk”. The biggest problem I have is keeping track of SD card because it’s so small.
I hear windows 8 also removes the taskbar and the option to manually hibernate from shutdown menu keeping only the options to suspend to ram and shutdown.