Hi there, let me skip the standard "MOI rocks, it's a great tool, yadayadayada :-)" We all know that.

Is it possible to run MOI from a USB stick? I would like to show it to more people and i'm not always able to install it (rights problem on a network).
It would be great to have MOI at the ready 24/7 as well (one of the best things MODO offers :-).

Not specifically looking for U3 support or anything...just run from stick.

Also, MOI rocks, it's really a great tool (already)....sigh, couldn't resist.

Hi Edwin,

> Hi there, let me skip the standard "MOI rocks, it's a great tool, yadayadayada :-)" We all know that.

Hey, I'm still not tired of hearing that yet! ;)


> Is it possible to run MOI from a USB stick? I would like to show it to
> more people and i'm not always able to install it (rights problem on
> a network).

Yes, this will work. MoI is designed to be self-contained, it doesn't rely on stuff in the registry, etc...

After you do an install, just take all the files and subdirectories in the MoI directory in \Program Files, and copy them to your USB stick. Take your USB stick to a different computer, and then you should be able to run moi.exe directly from the USB stick on the other computer.

The only thing that won't come over this way is any options that you may have set (colors, etc..). These are stored in the moi.ini file, which is located in c:\Documents and Settings\[your login name]\Application Data\Moi\moi.ini . It's stored over there by default because users with limited rights can't write to files in the \Program files folder. However, if you move the moi.ini file to be in the same directory as moi.exe, it will look for it there and use that one if it is present. So just copy this moi.ini file over to the USB stick and then your settings will come along with you as well.

It's cool that Modo does this as well. I'm afraid it has become rather rare nowadays.

Please let me know if you run into any problems running MoI off the stick.


> Not specifically looking for U3 support or anything..

That's good, because I don't know what that is.


> Also, MOI rocks, it's really a great tool (already)....sigh, couldn't resist.

Ah, there we go... Thanks! ;) ;)

- Michael

Hey cool. I actually tried the copying but it didn't work, hence my request.
I will try it again, maybe i did something wrong.
U3 (www.u3.com) is a way of installing software to a flash/u3 stick.
Everything is run from the stick and it will leave no traces on the pc you are using.
This is great for browsing and knowing your history is not copied onto the pc.
Another thing is that no temp-files are written to the pc, so you can do your work but people can't steal it when browsing the temp-folder.

Thx again

> Hey cool. I actually tried the copying but it didn't work, hence my request.
> I will try it again, maybe i did something wrong.

Hmmm, I just tried it over here on a USB stick, and it seemed to work fine for me. Make sure you copy everything including the subdirectories. And if you want to run it direct from the drive, don't zip it up or anything, just do a simple copy.

Also you can't actually run it on just any computer, the other computer has to be compatible with MoI, like it has to be Win2k or WinXP, DirectX9 on it, etc.. Like if you try to bring it to a Win98 machine that won't work.

Let me know if you still have problems after you try it again.


> Everything is run from the stick and it will leave no traces on the pc you are using.

MoI doesn't really automatically create a bunch of temp files like a browser does. The only file that I can think of that MoI will automatically write to is moi.ini . But if you have put a moi.ini file on the USB stick, then it should write to that one so even that shouldn't write to the hard drive.

It won't be guaranteed to leave absolutely zero traces on the computer, because Windows itself will store some junk in the registry when you run a program (like the last directory that the open file dialog was using, etc..). But this will be extremely minimal.

- Michael

I just tried it on my 256 mb USB stick and it seems to work just fine.
Cheers :)

Working like a charm. (tried another USB stick).
Hopefully this will stay in even after the official release !!!

Thx for the help.

> Hopefully this will stay in even after the official release !!!

Yup, I have no plan to change it.

The only thing that might be a little different with the official release is you may need to type in your license key type thingy the first time you run it somewhere, I haven't really figured out how that is going to work yet. But probably I can make some kind of .key file that you can copy with the .exe so you don't even have to do that though.

- Michael