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It is possible. And I am going to reveal the secret to you. What I am talking about is the Windows Preinstallation Environment, or WinPE. It is the cut-down, lean, mean version of Windows 2000, Windows XP Professional, or even Windows Vista, that is used during the installation phase of these operating systems, and which gives you that Windows-like interface BEFORE you have even installed Windows fully. Anyone who has installed any of these operating systems has used WinPE and probably didn't even know it!
Do you remember the old days of creating a DOS boot disk as a diagnostic tool, to help you if your operating system doesn't boot up properly? I used to have a whole collection of them, for all the different operating systems that I used, along with a selection of my favorite repair tools on individual floppy disks. These days I just use a bootable CD-R disk with the WinPE environment on it, which includes my antivirus, antispyware, registry editing tools, etc all on the same CD-R. And it boots up a copy of Windows straight from the CD-R disk! No further installation required. No messing around with dual booting. You could even have it run from a bootable USB thumb drive if you wanted to! How handy would that be? Your own operating system, with all your own applications and settings, stored on a USB thumb drive that you could plug into any computer and boot from it into a Windows environment! Any computer with a USB port in it could be yours! Another great trick is putting an RDP client, such as Microsoft Terminal Services Client or WinVNC onto your WinPE installation, and using that to access an RDP host session, given that you own the required CAL for this access (sorry, even this idea won't get you around the Microsoft licensing regime entirely).
Here is an Adobe PDF file hosted on the Microsoft website that gives a technical overview of the Windows Preinstallation Environment. Here is a step-by-step instructional guide on how to set up a bootable WinPE implementation on a USB thumb drive. And here is a Microsoft Technet document that explains the Windows Vista WinPE features. Sure, there are many limitations on such an operating system, and it's not the type of thing that you can use on all of your computers. For instance, you cannot use WinPE to print from the computer that it is installed on, as the print spooler subsystem isn't enabled. It doesn't support OpenGL or Windows Multimedia, so it's not a gaming platform. It automatically reboots after 24 hours (or 72 hours with Vista), so it is not a stable server platform. But for testing, for instance setting up a web server test bench, it is great! Care is needed in providing the appropriate device drivers, and generic drivers are preferable if you intend to use your implementation of WinPE on a variety of different computers, such as I do with my diagnostic CD-R.
Legally speaking, you need to own a fully licensed copy of the source operating system that you are creating a WinPE implementation of. The CAB files from your original installation CD are used to generate your WinPE implementation, so therefore you MUST have a valid license to use it in the first place. Also, you are still forbidden from using WinPE on more than one computer at a time unless you have multiple licenses. But this problem is overcome by making your WinPE installation portable. If it is built on a CD-R or a USB thumb drive, then you can only use it on one computer at a time anyway, whichever computer that CD-R disk or that USB thumb drive is connected to at the time. Just don't go making multiple copies of your WinPE implementation. Simple!
There are other ways of using WinPE out there, and one very popular one is called BartPE, created by Bart Lagerweij. It uses similar technology to WinPE, but it is much more flexible than WinPE is by itself. The Windows Preinstallation Environment is truly an admin's best friend!
Edited by travstatesmen, 14 September 2008 - 08:13 AM.
