Windows loaded on EEPROM chip

[f117nighthawk]

A friend of mine told me that it's possible to load Windows directly into a computer's EEPROM and run it crash free that way. Is this possible in reality? If Windows were loaded into EEPROM, where would the BIOS go?

[Tuttle]

Windows XP Embedded maybe, but not full-blown Windows XP - you'd run out of space. I don't see how it would help you run crash-free though.

As for Windows booting off interesting places, it is possible to boot a variant of Windows XP from the CD without using the hard drive. It's called WinPE (for Preinstallation Environment) and used by OEMs.

[Platypus]

You can get an adaptor to connect flash RAM, such as a CF card, to the IDE interface and appear as a bootable disk drive. In principle, a compact Windows installation could be booted from this. However Windows writes to the drive a great deal, and as EEPROM has a limited number of write cycles, lifespan would be poor.

This type of installation needs an OS which seldom writes to the drive.

[f117nighthawk]

And I've yet to see an OS that's like that.