July 28
Build a Bootable Windows Thumbdrive
Microsoft geek, Ward R., once told me that some poor shmo imprisoned in a basement came up with a way to build a bootable image of Windows XP in 128MB. But then he said the exact science of it all is a major Microsoft mojo secret and I could get shot if he told me how it's done. Fortunately, time has ticked on.
Now it's many moons later and 256MB, 512MB or even 1GB USB thumb drives can be had for about $50 or less. This
Tom's Hardware post describes using a freeware utility, called
Bart PE Builder, to put together a bootable thumbdrive image along with a couple hundred megs of app data you might need. Anything happens to your PC and you can boot right off of this image and go to work.
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