FWIW - I just conducted a little experiment running BIAB 2014 from the provided USB Drive.

First, let me explain that I have a somewhat complicated set-up: 2 soundcards (internal and external-USB), a number of piano/keyboard VSTs, and a DAW (Reaper). My keyboard is a Kawai VPC-1 connected to the PC via USB-MIDI.

I've been running BIAB 2014 completely off of the computer's hard drive, and have ALWAYS had problems configuring things correctly so that I could seamlessly play along with BIAB with my VSTs. There seemed to always be conflicts in the audio/MIDI settings that needed sorting out, depending on which VST I was using.

So, based on the info I received in this thread, I decided to try running BIAB2014 completely off of the provided USB hard drive. More specifically. I simply dbl-clicked on the BIAB application file. (I did NOT uninstall BIAB 2014 from the computer's hard drive beforehand).

The result was that BIAB2014 ran with each and every VST (both standalone and from within Reaper) without a hitch! In fact, it seemed to "auto-adjust" its MIDI-Audio settings on the fly. When playing a VST from within Reaper, it used one of the sound cards, yet switched automatically to the other sound card when playing a VST from outside of Reaper! IOW BIAB2014 seemed to exhibit more flexibility when run completely off of the provided USB hard drive!

Did this happen because I never uninstalled BIAB from the computer hard drive (and perhaps the USB-Drive's version of BIAB was using parts of the computer hard drive's installation)? Or is this normal behavior when running completely off of the provided USB drive?

As far as I can see, the only drawback was that BIAB took longer to load - but after loading, it ran just as fast!

My configuration problems (until now) made me hesitant in upgrading to 2017, but now I'm considering it much more strongly!

Thanks!

Kawai VPC1 MIDI Controller; Asus A53E Laptop running Windows 7 - 64 bit; BIAB 2017 UltraPlusPak (upgraded from 2014 EverythingPak), running from Laptop's Hard Drive.