How To Make a Portable Version of Windows 7

I just came across the coolest tip over on the forums at thewindowsclub.com and I had to share it. I definitely can’t take credit for this how-to – it was posted by forum member tweakwindows on June 30th. It’s basically a tutorial for setting up a portable installation of the Windows 7 OS that you can carry around with you on a flash drive and run like any other portable application. That’s pretty fantastic, if I do say so myself.

Before you get started, you’ll need two things: a bootable copy of Windows 7 on either a DVD or USB drive and a 6GB+ USB drive (8GB recommended) for the portable installation.

Then, just follow this procedure:

1. Insert your USB drive and backup all your data.
2. Next, download portable Virtual Box and extract the zip file contents to your USB flash drive.
3. Open your USB drive, go to portable VirtualBox folder and run the portable VirtualBox file.
4. Follow the on screen procedure to create a virtual drive.
5. Once you have virtual drive, you can easily install Windows 7 VirtualBox.
6. After installing Windows 7 on the portable VirtualBox, safely remove your flash drive.
7. Plug-in your USB drive to any Windows system and start using Windows just like a live CD/DVD.

Obviously, this is an overview of the steps required – probably enough to get most geeks up-and-running. But if you need more info on setting up Windows 7 on a virtual drive, go to the Into Windows website where the more detailed procedure is documented.