Officially, Windows To Go is supported only in Enterprise version (Enterprise), however, the instructions below will allow you to make a Live USB to any Windows 8 and 8.1. As a result, you get the OS running on any external storage device (USB flash drive, external hard drive), the main thing to make it work fast enough.
To perform this procedure in this guide, you will need:
- USB flash drive or hard drive with at least 16 GB. It is desirable that the drive was fast enough and supported USB0 - in this case, boot from it, and the work will be more comfortable in the future.
- Installation disc or ISO image with Windows 8 or 8.1. If you do not, you can download a trial version from the official Microsoft website, it is also nice.
- GImageX free utility, which can be downloaded from the official site https://www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit-tools/gimagex/. The very tool provides a graphical interface to the Windows ADK (if easier - making the following steps accessible, even a novice user).
Create Live USB with Windows 8 (8.1)
The first thing you need to do to create a bootable USB drive Windows To Go - extract the install.wim file from an ISO image (it is best to pre-mount it on a system to do this in Windows 8 it is sufficient to double-click on the file), or disk. However, you can not extract - enough to know where he is: sources \ install.wim - this file just contains the entire operating system.
Note: If you do not have this file, but there install.esd instead, then, unfortunately, I do not know a simple way to convert esd in wim (sophisticated way: with the installation of the image into a virtual machine, and then creating install.wim installed system). Take the package from Windows 8 (not 8.1), there will definitely be wim.
The next step, start the utility GImageX (32 bits or 64 bits, in accordance with the version installed on your computer operating system), and click the Apply contribution to the program.
In the Source (Source), specify the path to the file install.wim, and in the Destination (destination) - the path to a flash drive or external USB drive. Click «Apply» (Apply).
Wait for the process of unpacking the files of Windows 8 on the drive (about 15 minutes by USB 2.0).
After that, run the Windows disc management utility (you can press the Windows + R keys and enter diskmgmt.msc), find the external drive to which the system files have been installed, click on it right-click and select "Make the section Active" (if this The item is not active, the step can be skipped).
The last step is to create a boot record, so that you can boot from your Windows to Go flash drive. Run the command prompt on behalf of the administrator (you can press the Windows + x keys and select the desired menu item) and enter the following, after each command clicking Enter:
- L: (where L is the letter of a flash drive or an external disk).
- CD Windows \ System32
- BCDBoot.exe L: \ Windows / S L: / F All
On this, the procedure for creating a boot flash drive with Windows to Go completed. You have enough to download it from it into the computer's bios to run the OS. When you first start with Live USB, you will need to make a setup procedure similar to that when you first start Windows 8 after reinstalling the system.