{"id":4325,"date":"2017-11-22T18:25:58","date_gmt":"2017-11-22T08:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/?p=4325"},"modified":"2017-11-22T18:25:58","modified_gmt":"2017-11-22T08:25:58","slug":"installing-windows-on-a-usb-key","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2017\/11\/22\/installing-windows-on-a-usb-key\/","title":{"rendered":"Installing Windows on a USB key"},"content":{"rendered":"

For some unknown reason, the Windows installer doesn’t let you install to a USB key. Luckily, there’s a simple workaround. It turns out that only the very<\/strong> first<\/strong> step of installation cares about that. So, if you can fool it (say, by running in qemu), you can have a USB key with a Windows install rather than having to dual boot on your hard disk (e.g. if you run Linux and want all that fast in-built SSD space for Linux)<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Download the Windows Installer: https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-au\/software-download\/windows10ISO<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Start the installer in a VM, with the USB key passed through to the VM as the hard disk (or use a disk image the same size as your USB key for transfer with a utility such as ‘dd’ later). e.g. do:\n
    qemu-img create -f raw win-installed.img 50G\r\n\r\nqemu-system-x86_64 --enable-kvm -m 8G -cdrom Downloads\/Win10_1709_English_x64.iso -hda win-installed.img -boot d<\/pre>\n<\/li>\n
  3. At the first reboot of the installer, instead of letting it boot, stop the VM. You are going to copy the install at this state to the USB key.<\/li>\n
  4. Boot from the USB key, go through the rest of the installer. You’re done!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
    For some unknown reason, the Windows installer doesn’t let you install to a USB key. Luckily, there’s a simple workaround. It turns out that only the very first step of installation cares about that. So, if you can fool it … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5a6n8-17L","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4210,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2016\/10\/30\/failed-retro-emulation-attempts\/","url_meta":{"origin":4325,"position":0},"title":"Failed Retro emulation attempts","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2016-10-30","format":false,"excerpt":"For reasons that should escape everybody, I went back and looked at some old Operating Systems a little while ago: OS\/2 Warp, Windows 3.11 and Microsoft Chicago. So, I went on a little adventure this weekend, largely in failure though. Windows NT 3.51 This was the first version (err... no,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Screenshot_rhapsodyDR2_2016-10-29_172143.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Screenshot_rhapsodyDR2_2016-10-29_172143.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Screenshot_rhapsodyDR2_2016-10-29_172143.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4321,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2017\/11\/22\/updating-windows-management-engine-firmware-on-a-lenovo-without-a-windows-install\/","url_meta":{"origin":4325,"position":1},"title":"Updating Intel Management Engine firmware on a Lenovo without a Windows Install","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2017-11-22","format":false,"excerpt":"This is how I updated my Intel ME firmware on my Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen 4 (reports say this also has worked for Gen5 machines). These instructions are pretty strongly inspired by https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=15744152 Why?\u00c2\u00a0Intel security advisory\u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0CVE-2017-5705, CVE-2017-5708, CVE-2017-5711, and CVE-2017-5712 should be reason enough. You will need: To download about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Screenshot-from-2017-11-22-19-00-33-300x53.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":491,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2005\/10\/19\/solaris-10-under-qemu\/","url_meta":{"origin":4325,"position":2},"title":"Solaris 10 under QEMU","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2005-10-19","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm currently watching a Solaris 10 install under QEMU on my laptop. It seems to be taking a while, but getting there. (I got a Solaris 10 DVD in my AUUG shwag) Basically, I want to play with DTrace and see how easy it is to do things with it.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "cool gadgets"","block_context":{"text":"cool gadgets","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/cool-gadgets\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4105,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/13\/microsoft-chicago-retro-in-qemu\/","url_meta":{"origin":4325,"position":3},"title":"Microsoft Chicago – retro in qemu!","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2016-08-13","format":false,"excerpt":"So, way back when (sometime in the early 1990s) there was Windows 3.11 and times were... for Workgroups. There was this Windows NT thing, this OS\/2 thing and something brewing at Microsoft to attempt to make the PC less... well, bloody awful for a user. Again, thanks to abandonware sites,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Screenshot-from-2016-08-13-12-15-45.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Screenshot-from-2016-08-13-12-15-45.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Screenshot-from-2016-08-13-12-15-45.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3991,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/28\/running-opal-in-qemu-the-powernv-platform\/","url_meta":{"origin":4325,"position":4},"title":"Running OPAL in qemu – the powernv platform","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2015-08-28","format":false,"excerpt":"Ben has a qemu tree up with some work-in-progress patches to qemu to support the PowerNV platform. This is the \"bare metal\" platform like you'd get on real POWER8 hardware running OPAL, and it allows us to use qemu like my previous post used the POWER8 Functional Simulator - to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "IBM"","block_context":{"text":"IBM","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/work-et-al\/ibm-work-et-al\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4099,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/08\/windows-3-11-nostalgia\/","url_meta":{"origin":4325,"position":5},"title":"Windows 3.11 nostalgia","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2016-08-08","format":false,"excerpt":"Because OS\/2 didn't go so well... let's try something I'm a lot more familiar with. To be honest, the last time I in earnest used Windows on the desktop was around 3.11, so I kind of know it back to front (fun fact: I've read the entire Windows 3.0 manual).\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"win31-setup","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/win31-setup-300x167.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4326,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4325\/revisions\/4326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}