Compact version of HPTuners

[gman4dx266]

I have a naet idea which a few people may find awesome and helpful.

The question I'm proposing [semi-rhetorically] is, Can HPTuners run from a flash drive or a Windows live-CD? My old laptop would be perfect for tuning, but the hard drive connector has sheered off the board due to wear and tear over the years. I can boot the computer and run windows off of a flash drive and off of CD's or DVDs. I am thinking about putting together a live-flash or live-CD version of Windows & HPTuners together just to see how it works. Additionally you'd get better battery life just using a flash drive as your only storage device; no spinning hard drive.

[detroit]

you can download the program from the web site...so if you have an internet/network connection line you should be able to get HPT onto the lap top. Now I dont know about what other settings you could play with to stop the hard drive or what ever to make it a 'tuning only' lap top...I have a broken one I want to fix for this same reason too.

[gman4dx266]

Well, I dont forsee any major problems. I do know that in order to boot from a flash drive it needs to be formatted in FAT-16, which has a 2 gigabyte limit. That being said, I THINK you may be able to split, say, a 4gb drive in half with two partitions; the first being bootable, C:, with windows. The 2nd partition will become D.

Other than all that, Im guessing it's just a matter of unpacking all the XP cabs to the flashdrive, copying over a bootsector, and then installing the MPVI drivers once you get the thing to boot.

By the way, this wont be just stopping the hard drive; There wont be one in the computer even. The connector has busted off to where it really just needs a motherboard, however everything else works fine. If my flash drive idea works, ill take the computer apart, and solder wires to the inside edge of the USB port, and then to the flash drive and close it up inside the computer. Then I'll be all set!

[gman4dx266]

What I am running into which I didnt directly realize, is that the HPTuners suite programs are based on .NET Framework. Im having trouble getting a live-windows set up with .NET built in. Ive successfully booted my computer into Windows off of a flash drive, albeit after waiting a painstaking 10 minutes for it to load up. However once up and running, everything is quick. The plus side to that is you can modify settings and they stay modified; as opposed to a Live CD where your settings are lost more or less.

The other caveat I'm facing is loading the drivers. I THINK I am able to load them with the drvload command, not totally sure at this point.

[A_W_O_L]

....there are some pretty fast flash drives out there if you do some searching... would probably make booting a little faster...and/or SSD