Windows To Go [Maybe or Mostly] Portable Windows

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Windows To Go [Maybe or Mostly] Portable Windows

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Started 7 years ago by mikiem2
Latest reply from mikiem2

mikiem2
Moderator

Windows to Go is Microsoft's idea of a portable version of Windows that you can run [mostly] anywhere from a USB device, & always have access to your stuff. Each time you boot to Windows To Go it checks the device, & if it hasn't been run there before, it adds the necessary drivers -- once that's done, it's supposed to remember & reuse those drivers next time.

One limitation is that it's supposed to be used by biz with an Enterprise license -- another is that it's often reported to be glitchy. And there's no doubt that starting it up for the 1st time on hardware it hasn't seen before takes longer than stuff like the WinBuilder [& similar] projects at reboot[.]pro. But it is real Windows, and so might be of use to some folks.

So, gave Windows To Go a quick try... Running the 15025 Insider build of 10, the Windows To Go applet or wizard [in Control Panel] required the Enterprise Edition of Windows 10, contrary to online Microsoft docs that also mention edu versions. If you're signed up for the Insider Program, you can download Insider builds of 10 Enterprise as ISO files, which is what I did [also build 15025].

The 1st step is to mount the ISO in 10, then you can optionally copy the installation .wim file to your hdd, or just refer the wizard to the mounted ISO -- it shows up as a DVD drive. Microsoft has a list of recommended USB devices, & it will warn you if the device you select isn't one of them, but it will let you proceed regardless. I used an SSD in a USB 3.0 housing supporting UASP. Then it's just a matter of letting the wizard run. A message did pop up about formatting the SSD, & when I clicked OK it said it couldn't -- it didn't seem to effect anything however.

Next comes booting to the USB drive... My Asus motherboard showed 3 choices, the drive itself, a UEFI FAT32 option, & a UEFI NTFS option -- I selected the 2nd, FAT32. After a few minutes setting things up it restarted, then continued setting up for a few minutes before getting any dialog. I declined setting up Bit Locker & Cortana. I had the choice to download & add updates -- less than a minute after I selected yes it said it didn't work, so I clicked Skip. It asked to either sign in with an account, or set a name & password -- I clicked to use an account, but that didn't work either. A few minutes more & I was in 10, updating the Store etc.

A couple of messages said I was set up in the Insider Program, but when I checked for updates to 10 it said the Insider part needed fixed. When I checked to see if it was activated or not, it showed it couldn't activate because it couldn't reach the enterprise's license server. I've no idea yet whether I'll encounter limitations re: Insider status or not being activated -- all I can say is that so far it works.

Back in regular, installed 10, I backed up the SSD, creating a backup image in Paragon B&R 16. I created a VHD, & restored the backup to that, adding drive letters to both partitions so I could take a look at them. [By default when you're running Windows To Go the PC's drives/partitions are off line, & when you're running an installed copy of Windows, the plugged in drive is also off line. You can bring them online in Admin Tools -> Computer Mgmt] I was surprised to see it formatted MBR rather than GPT, that the 1st, hidden FAT32 partition was 350 MB, & I saw that that 1st partition included both UEFI & Legacy boot files.

I set up the VHD I created as dynamic or expanding, & initially it's ~12.5 GB. I plan on playing with it more as a V/Box VM to check out the effects of the Compact switch on the Windows system folders & files for example, & well, just play around & see if I come across any limitations.

Posted 7 years ago #
mikiem2
Moderator

Why bother with something like Windows To Go?...

In my case it's an alternative to regular Windows 10 on a USB device. A copy of 10 checks activation based on the hardware used & maybe the Microsoft account. Like Windows 7 & 8, if there's a hardware change it's recorded, & if the change is major enough, or if there have been enough minor changes recorded, Windows deactivates. When that happens the normal procedure since XP is to call a Microsoft activation call center, give them the key you got when you bought that copy of Windows, & [hopefully -- usually] get Windows reactivated. Unless you got that copy of 10 as an upgrade to 7 or 8, or if it's a limited OEM license -- in that case you likely have the choice to either run Windows inactivated or buy a new license.

Now when you run a regular copy of 10 on a USB device, if you run it plugged into a PC that's already had a copy of 10 activated on it, is that recorded by Microsoft as running that activated copy on a new hard drive? And if so, when you next run the copy installed on the PC's hard drive, is that recorded as another hard drive change? If the answer is yes, then running a regular copy of 10 on a USB device *could* mean having to buy a license sooner, e.g. if you had to replace the PC's hard drive. That's my logic anyway that prompted me to try Windows To Go.

But why bother with 10 on a USB device?...

As far as maintenance goes.
Booting any Windows device made in the last several years can be unfortunately iffy. Malware can be more persistent than was common 5 years ago. Windows 10 updates & upgrades builds more frequently, and each of those pose a higher risk that 10 will break. It's the nature of current devices that can run Windows 10 to sometimes use one or more lower cost components without continuing driver support, and those may not be compatible with a new build of 10 [e.g. the update coming in April].

Because booting to Any USB device can be so iffy, it can be very hit or miss trying to use the bootable USB sticks you set up with back up software, partitioning software etc. Booting to a copy of 10 on a USB device you can run a regular copy of that software for backup etc., which can also be faster than the WinPE-based bootable version [e.g. Paragon's B&R], &/or run stuff like file recovery software. You can also run anti-virus scans, since malware may set itself up to run every time you boot to the PC's hard drive, & that can hinder or prevent detection.

If Windows 10 breaks during an update or upgrade, fixing things can get pretty involved. Perhaps the most natural thing to do if something like that happens is to take to Google, but what if that's your only PC or laptop? Trying to find answers using your cell phone's small screen can be a real PITA. And/or what if you have something you have to finish with your PC or laptop? Being able to use your PC/laptop with a working copy of 10 could be a big help.

As Windows 10 continues development towards the new build in April, 2017, going by intermediate Insider builds, hardware & driver support has changed. Personally I'll be putting the Insider build with the final changes on a USB drive, hopefully in March [& likely as Windows To Go], and running it on everything to get a heads up if I'm going to have problems with any hardware. That way I'll have time to find an answer or figure out what I need to do ahead of time rather than suffering an unpleasant surprise.

And then there is privacy & convenience.
If you want to completely erase your tracks in Windows on a conventional hard drive, erase the hard drive [or VHD] where it was installed. If you use Windows on a USB device, those tracks will be on the USB device that you unplug & take with you [you could have Windows 10 + your software all on a micro SD card]. You can also install, activate, & use software on different devices without having to install it on each of those devices.

That said, I don't believe that you should rely on Windows 10 running on a USB device for any extra safety or protection from malware, because malware could seek out the PC's hard drive(s) -- they'd be less vulnerable to infection if you used a VM with no connection to those drives. [With a VM any physical hard drives are *optionally* accessed through a network or remote connection that you set up -- a PC's hard drive(s) are wired directly to the PC, as is any USB connection, so to remove all possible drive access the drive would have to be unplugged.] Neither 10 running on a USB device nor a VM would provide any help if the malware sought out any other devices or storage attached to the same network.

Finally I'll add that if you do or plan to cross borders you should think about the security of your private information, as well as be aware of anything that might be somehow used against you. This is an area of increasing concern among security specialists as much as privacy advocates/activists. If there are border agents, they might demand access to your devices, & while doing so compromise them. It's increasingly recommended that when you hand over any device, you should never trust that device again, ever, to the point of never having them connect to your home network again. Reports are also being published of border agents scouring everything stored on a device, as well as demanding access to any social accounts etc. Remember of course that while in another country you don't have the same protection of laws [e.g. against spying] that that country's citizens do.

This means some people naturally are using devices they consider throw-away, and setting up & using temporary or secondary accounts on those devices, or perhaps on devices that they've sanitized & plan on sanitizing again when they return. In some countries some folks do this sort of thing as protection against their country's authorities. Windows 10 on a microSD card might make up for some of the inconvenience [why I'm including this discussion here], but you'd need to realize that you might be using it in an insecure environment, e.g. if the laptop you were using it with had been compromised, taking whatever extra measures you think appropriate.

[My initial thoughts are maybe looking at an isolated VM running in 10 on USB with a USB network adapter attached & using a VPN. It's difficult to hide that a VMs been run, so that's why running it in a separate copy of Windows -- VMs are also by nature isolated from hardware. Together with the USB network adapter that *might* avoid a hardware or bios compromise of the host device [the sort of compromises expected I think], though that USB adapter could also become compromised if someone had hands-on. But I'm not expert on the topic so if you were inclined to do something like this, I suggest more research.]

Posted 7 years ago #
mikiem2
Moderator

OK, with AOMEI's partition app on GOTD I had a reason to fire up my Windows To Go experiment as a VM -- since it's supposed to adapt to different hardware, it shouldn't take anything extra, just attach the drive & fire it up basically. With a VM Host like the VMWare Chris uses, you could probably just attach the USB drive to the VM host & more-or-less hit start. With the VBox I use however, USB connections are a bit dismal, & you can't easily boot to one. So in this case I took my existing Windows 10 VM, disconnected the normal VHD, & attached the VHD where I had earlier restored a backup image of the USB Windows To Go drive. [I could (maybe should) have set up a new virtual machine with the new VHD but I was/am lazy.]

So WTG fired right up as a VM. I had originally booted to WTG using UEFI -- my Windows 10 VM uses a MBR disk & Legacy bios mode, because that's easier to set up & work with. That it booted without turning on UEFI is a good thing when it comes to compatibility.

I also checked & found WTG was not activated, which in this case was a good thing, because one of my original concerns was that it would attempt to activate & count against the allowed number of hardware changes.

Installing the VBox additions, updates, & installing the AOMEI app don't offer anything really to write about. I did find that 10's compatibility troubleshooter made changes when run on the AOMEI app's .exe file, but not when I ran it on a copy in 10 installed to a real hard drive -- but that's just a curiosity IMHO. It is easier to work on WTG as a VM, which is probably what I'll continue to do, restoring a backup of the VHD to a USB drive whenever I want to update that copy.

Posted 7 years ago #
mikiem2
Moderator

I've got more time spent writing this up than I have spent hands-on creating my Windows To Go installation, updating it as a VM to a newer version, & trying it out booting to the USB drive with this PC. Regardless my poor writing skills, which may make this seem overly complicated, Windows To Go or regular Windows 10 on a USB drive isn't really that big of a deal or project. While there are all sorts of ways I can think of that my Windows To Go setup might come in handy, the main reason I went to the trouble is that I'm concerned about the upcoming Windows 10 version's hardware compatibility -- this way I can find out in minutes if one of our devices will be compatible as-is, without any of the side effects or consequences I might face if I try updating & it doesn't work.

* * *

There doesn't seem to be any big difference between regular Windows 10 on a USB drive & the Windows To Go version. If I'm correct then, that has several implications.

technet[.]microsoft[.]com/en-us/itpro/windows/plan/windows-to-go-overview
technet[.]microsoft[.]com/en-us/itpro/windows/plan/windows-to-go-frequently-asked-questions

One implication is that there are 3 ways of setting up Windows 10 on a USB drive.

Using the Windows To Go wizard in 10's Control panel, using the install.wim that's on a Windows 10 enterprise ISO, may be the easiest. It does set a flag on the drive's partition or volume to by default not assign a drive letter when you plug the drive in while you're running Windows -- the FAQ tells you how to reset that. You do need to have a copy of 10 installed & running to use the Windows To Go wizard. It does require the Enterprise version ISO. That means that it will not activate for the average home user because you won't have the required licensing data on a server -- that's actually the reason I decided to try Windows To Go, since I wanted to avoid activation.

[When it installs & runs, Windows records your device hardware & any hardware IDs, e.g. drive serial numbers & MAC address. That information is uploaded to Microsoft's servers when you activate Windows 10. Depending on how you activated 10, e.g. the free upgrade, changes in that Windows hardware ID can trigger de-activation -- Microsoft has stated that they will allow an unspecified amount of hardware changes before that happens. If you bought a Windows 10 license separately you can probably re-activate 10, but if not, e.g. if you have a free upgrade license, then you have to buy a new license to activate Windows 10. I was concerned that running 10 on a USB drive would cause it to activate based on the hardware ID, which is already recorded at Microsoft with Windows 10 being activated, and that might register as a hardware change, meaning I had fewer changes left before de-activation.]

Since there doesn't appear to be anything special about Windows 10 when you use the Windows To Go wizard, you could also just take a regular Windows installation & copy it to a USB drive, running that copy of 10 on whatever hardware. When it sees new hardware, 10 attempts to find & install the necessary drivers so it'll run, and this seems to be part of Windows 10 itself, rather than something added when you create the Windows To Go version. This means that you should also be able to take a copy of 10 running on a USB drive & copy it to a regular internal hard drive. How well Windows 10 adapts to new hardware has improved -- the 1st general release of 10 very often did not work if you tried this... that's why I used the Apply Image method in the past.

Windows setup files use a special type of image file called a .wim -- a .esd file is the same thing only compressed & encrypted. When you run setup the contents of that image file are extracted & copied to the drive -- applying that same image file using Dism does the same thing, but without the dialogs, & without trying to run Windows, so no drivers etc. are added yet. The Windows To Go wizard also uses Dism. It is more work to set things up to use Dism to apply an image -- you have to set up a WinPE drive, create the separate Windows 10 partitions, add the boot files after applying the image, and may want to re-hide some partitions [e.g. the boot partition] when that's done.

Using the Apply Image method of installing 10 does have advantages. The resulting installation is as small as possible when it comes to disk space. If you do a disk image backup after applying an image, adding the boot files etc., restoring that backup to whatever drive on whatever device can be slightly faster that running Windows 10 setup on that same device. And while a installed copy of Windows 10, regular or Windows To Go versions, will not work on every device, as long as the device can run 10, the Apply Image method will work. [I've gone into more detail on using Apply Image in earlier posts, so I've skipped it here -- if you want more detail please ask & I'll repost.]

My strategy...
I back up the Windows To Go drive, which I'd do regardless, & restore that backup to a VHD I created in Windows 7, using that as a VM in VirtualBox. That lets me much more painlessly update that copy of Windows 10, and add software to it, since I can do much of that while it's running in the background while I'm doing other stuff. And when it's time to update the copy on the USB drive, I restore a backup of the VHD [which I'd again create regardless] to the USB drive -- it takes less than 10 minutes.

A real test for my strategy was if I could update the version of Windows 10, & yesterday I found that indeed I can. There's little point in adding software from GOTD if I had to start all over when a new version of Windows 10 came out, e.g. the Creators Update in April. There were [are] catches however...

I did this Windows To Go thing using a Insider version of 10 -- I've got concerns about the upcoming [general release] version's compatibility, so I wanted to use a copy of 10 that's as close to that new version as possible. Because I can't activate this copy if I wanted to, I can't use Windows Update to get a new Insider version, so I have to use a Windows 10 ISO, which Microsoft does not release for every Insider build. I'll do this again with the RTM ISO when it's out, but for now it's enough for me to know that it works.

Windows 10 on a USB drive adds a special registry key, & as long as that key's present, 10 will not allow you to update the Windows 10 version. Copy/paste the following into a new text file in Notepad, change the dword value from 1 to 0, save the file with a .reg extension, and merge it with the registry [double click or right-click] to allow version updates etc. I put it back when the update was finished -- not sure if there would be any effects if I hadn't.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control] "PortableOperatingSystem"=dword:00000001

Updating Windows 10 versions doesn't retain unused drivers that had previously been installed. When I originally ran this Windows To Go installation on this PC, it needed one reboot as it added the needed drivers -- from then on it did not as the drivers were already there. Since the update was performed in V/Box, it had to add the drivers & reboot again.

Because the version update/upgrade process used Windows setup, it added a Recovery partition like normal Windows 10 -- Windows To Go doesn't use one. This is really a case of "it's up to you". I don't use [don't believe in for that matter] Windows Recovery. Because there was only a very slight difference between Windows 10 builds, I left the boot partition alone, only restoring a backup of the Windows partition, completely ignoring the Recovery partition. That said, there are potential options & issues...

Updating Windows versions also updates the boot files -- that *may* matter in the future depending on what they change. Updating those boot files using Windows setup *might* mean either UEFI or Legacy boot modes are included rather than both as with Windows To Go. That can be fixed [BCDBoot.exe] if necessary -- it might not be, e.g. if you only plan to use that copy of Windows with one type of bios, UEFI or Legacy. The new version boot files will include a link or links to Windows Recovery. Windows To Go does not include Windows Recovery, but I couldn't find anything that said Why, e.g. will it work, or not with a USB drive. IOW & IMHO, include the Recovery Partition if you want.

Microsoft not including the Recovery option in Windows To Go **might** have more to do with them having to support Windows To Go with their enterprise customers. Part of it may be that multiple partitions on a USB stick can be very iffy -- Microsoft has a very limited number of USB devices that they support. My thoughts on USB drives...

The speed of the drive effects usability -- slower drives work just as well as fast ones if you're patient. USB 3.0 is better than 2, but not all devices have full USB 3.0 speeds until Windows starts. Personally I found a cheap, small SSD in a cheap external housing was cheaper than a comparably fast USB stick. You can use the Compact option to make Windows 10's footprint on disk smaller, but it has a performance penalty, & so is only recommended for faster drives. Running Windows Disk Cleanup after adding a cumulative update to 10 can often remove a GB or more of unneeded files. Every time you run a copy of Windows 10 on a USB drive on hardware it hasn't seen before, newly added drivers will increase its footprint. With AOMEI's Backupper & Partition Assistant installed, & using the Compact option, my Windows To Go comes in at a little short of 12 GB with drivers for both this PC & VirtualBox.

At the command prompt: COMPACT.EXE /CompactOS:always -- replace "always" with the word never to turn it off.

What's bootable & what's not depends a lot on hardware, so your mileage will vary. The default Windows To Go setup I have uses a small FAT32 boot partition + a larger NTFS Windows partition. UEFI spec says you have to have that FAT32 boot partition, but, most PCs etc. also have automatic Legacy bios modes, & in that case the boot files can be on the same partition as Windows. There's also the option of trying exFAT on a USB stick rather than NTFS. You can use Easy BCD or Windows BCDBoot to add &/or modify the boot files, e.g. if you want to stick them on the Windows partition.

msdn[.]microsoft[.]com/en-us/windows/hardware/commercialize/manufacture/desktop/bcdboot-command-line-options-techref-di

Posted 7 years ago #
mikiem2
Moderator

Back Up Windows To Go Drives

After using mine on a variety of hardware, I found it wouldn't boot with my wife's PC -- I suspect it was a USB hardware incompatibility. When I went to use it again on this PC, it froze while trying to open Disk Manager. Then it wouldn't boot, with messages Windows was going to try to repair that copy of Windows. Later, mounting the drive in Windows to see what was what, the Windows partition showed RAW. Restored from backup & it was fine.

Posted 7 years ago #

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