Running Encarta 2008 from a USB drive?

[acerpod]

I'm now using an old Dell Dimension with a 20GB HDD and 128 MB RAM. I have installed Encarta 2008 which has slowed it down tremendously. I have a 160GB USB drive and am wondering if I can put all Encarta's info folders and files on the external drive and leave just the exe files on my HDD. Can that work? And if so, can I just copy/paste to my USB drive? Or does it entail doing a full re-install and separate the folders then? I can simply try it, but it took me almost a full hour to install and I wouldn't like to have to go through that again if my attempt fails.

Dell Dimension Pentium 3 866 MHz
Win XP Pro
20GB HDD
128MB RAM

 

[linney]

I think the only way that might work is if you installed Encarta on the USB drive in the first place. I imagine the program is setup to deal with the files in their current location, changing this might depend on any options available via the Encarta program. Read this semi related article and see if you have any similar options via the "modify" option of the uninstaller in Add or Remove.

How to copy the Encarta CD-ROM to the hard disk

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325932

 

[acerpod]

Thanks linney. Tried it and it didn't work. I guess it has to remain on the HDD.

 

[TheLad]

What didn't work? As Linney said, if you perform the install but specify the install path as the drive letter of your USB HDD, then Encarta will be installed on the USB HDD.

What issues did you get?

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[acerpod]

Do you mean install ALL of Encarta on the USB HDD?
I tried putting the data folders on the USB and the exe files on the HDD and the program won't start up. I'll try installing everything on the USB drive. Thanks.

 

[TheLad]

It probably won't work if you manually copied them due to settings that get written to the registry or other options (as mentioned by Linney), however if you do a fresh install and specify the USB HDD as the install path you should have better results.

Just think of it as another hard drive. I have a partitioned D: that I install some of my applications onto and although yours is a USB HDD, the same principle applies.

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