Microsoft's Windows 8 Consumer Preview is called that for a reason—there isn't a lot on the surface that looks very compelling about the new operating system to business users. The revelation that Microsoft would not support domains or other administrative features on Windows 8 for ARM devices dumped cold water on many enterprise customers' hopes for a single, unified way to manage users and systems across desktop and mobile devices.

But Windows 8 does offer a “mobile” alternative that may at least pique business and tech support users' curiosity: Windows to Go, an installation of Windows 8 that boots from a USB thumb drive. In theory, Windows to Go could give administrators a way of creating a verified, locked-down image of the Windows 8 OS that can be given to wandering users, temporary off-site contractors, or telecommuters to allow them to connect to the corporate network with confidence from their own (or someone else's) computer.

Windows to Go could also be attractive to desktop support teams—or anyone else who ever gets drafted into fixing a friend's or relative's computer. While it doesn't access local storage at start-up, local drives can be mounted and accessed so they can be repaired, or scrubbed of boot-sector viruses and other nastiness on the host computer.

Because Windows to Go needs to run on anything you plug it into, there are some inherent limitations and considerations to think about. To avoid compatibility issues, you'll likely want to use the 32-bit version of Windows 8 (unless you want to specifically restrict it to systems with Intel or AMD 64-bit processors, which sort of defeats the purpose of Windows to Go).

Creating your Windows to Go

To get an idea of what can and can't be done with Windows to Go, I built my own installation of the OS—a task that is not for the faint of heart, as it involves the command line. It's probable that Microsoft will make the process a little more polished (and easier to replicate) before the OS is released commercially, but for now Windows to Go relies on the same Microsoft command-line tools administrators have used to roll their own images for years. For those who dare, here's what you'll need to get started:

A PC running Windows 7 or Windows 8 beta;

The ISO image of Windows 8 Consumer Preview (32-bit);

The Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK)

A USB storage device (at least 30GB)

While Windows 8 itself doesn't take up a full 30GB—a fully configured image I built, including Microsoft Office, takes up about 14GB of disk space—Windows to Go also needs room for temporary files and memory swap space. After overpaying for a 32GB SanDisk Cruzer flashdrive from a local computer store, I set to work. Here's the step-by-step replay:

First, the USB drive needs to be prepared for the image by using Windows' diskpart command-line disk partitioning utility to re-partition and format it as a bootable NTFS drive. From an administrator-level command prompt:

Run diskpart

At the DISKPART> command prompt, enter LIST to find the USB device's disk number.

command prompt, enter to find the USB device's disk number. Select the USB as active by entering SELECT DISK and its disk number (for example, if the USB drive is listed as disk 2, enter SELECT DISK 2 )

and its disk number (for example, if the USB drive is listed as disk 2, enter ) Purge all the existing partitions from the USB by entering CLEAN

Create a new partition : CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY

Quick-format the partition as bootable NTFS: format fs=ntfs quick

Set the partition as active: ACTIVE

Leave diskpart by typing in EXIT

Here's what that looks like in Windows 8:

The next step is to pull the image file for Windows 8 Consumer Preview out of the ISO file—the DVD image downloadable from Microsoft's Windows 8 preview site. If you've already installed Windows 8, ISO files can be mounted as virtual disks; otherwise, you can either burn the ISO to disk or use a utility program to open the file. The image file, install.wim , can be found in the sources directory of the disk image. Once you've located install.wim, create a new directory on the local hard disk (I used C:winonastick) and copy it there.

This is where the Windows AIK comes into play. If you're installing AIK for the first time onto a Windows 8 system, you'll need to install the Microsoft .NET framework (version 3.5) first, which can be launched by clicking on the “.NET Framework Setup” link in the AIK install program shown below (it says .NET Framework 2.0 when launched, but will automatically retrieve 3.5).

Then install AIK. The kit consists of a set of command-line tools for building and distributing custom Windows images, but for the scope of this project, we're only interested in one of them: imagex.exe, which will extract the image from the .WIM file and write it to our USB drive. There are three versions of imagex.exe in the AIK—one for each desktop architecture (32-bit x86, and 64-bit Intel and AMD). Copy the version for the architecture of Windows you're running on your PC (the 32-bit version is at C:Program Files|Windows AIKToolsx86) to the directory we put the install.wim into (C:winonastick).

Now, check the drive letter assigned to the USB device (in our demonstration here, it's D:), and then go to the command prompt again as administrator and change the directory to the directory where install.wim and imagex.exe are. Enter the command: imagex.exe /apply install.wim 1 d: (or substitute your USB's drive letter for D if it's elswhere).

Once imagex has run its course, still at the administrative-level command prompt, add the boot record to the USB by entering at the C:> prompt: bcdboot.exe d:windows /s d: /f ALL

And that's it—you're now the proud owner of a Windows to Go USB. It's also possible to create a more customized version of the Windows to Go image using the other tools provided in the Windows AIK, but it may be simpler to follow the steps I've just outlined and then apply changes to the USB itself—and then re-capture the image using imagex and reproduce it as required.

Booting up

On first startup, the Windows 8 preview Windows to Go install will detect hardware and reboot, and then bring up the screen requesting the product key. Then it walks through the rest of the final installation. It's important to choose a fairly standard (and recent) machine for the first setup, since (as I found in my first attempt) booting it for the first time on an older laptop resulted in a hard-wired screen resolution of 1024 x 768—fine if that's the only machine the user will boot from, but somewhat disappointing for more upwardly mobile users.

The performance of the system was good on the three machines I tested boot-up from (if somewhat slow on older machines, as would be expected). I was also able to mount local disks and get to files on a home system since I was running at administrative permissions.

So is this a potential solution for enterprises? Since this works with any USB-mountable storage, it's certainly one way to deal with the whole bring-your-own-device conundrum companies are now facing in various ways. It would allow employees and contractors to use the hardware of their choice (as long as it's up to the task). And by using administrative tools to do system policies and Active Directory lockdown, it's possible to prevent users from exfiltrating data to their own systems, or infect the corporate network with the viruses they've downloaded to their own systems. But that in itself is probably not enough to drive wider corporate adoption of Windows 8—especially among companies still clinging to Windows XP.