Run Programs from a USB drive... can I?

I use a lot of USB flash drives to save data and carry them from home to my laptop where I have most of the same programs installed and so can carry on working at either place. Its very convenient.

I have a friend with a computer that's been so neglected that it barely runs anymore. He says the OS is buggered and he needs more memory. I believe he just needs a good clean up, defrag, and some other small maintenance utilities run on the machine.

So, my 1st question is, if I download some programs to my USB flash can I run them from that to clean his machine?

My 2nd question is do you recommend any particular programs that could be loaded to a flash drive to do this sort of thing?

So far, on my flash drive I've downloaded the zips for: Ccleaner, Defraggler,
Spybot Search & Destroy, pc-decrapifier, and a freepcaudit link.
He at one time had Norton on his comp so I also have NortonRemoval on the drive. Most of what I've gathered I may not need but I do know he's running Vista on one computer and XP on the other and needs to have both of them operating properly.
I have Vista on my own machines...

So, my 3rd question is:
OK I have these little beauties on the flash drive... Can I open and install them to that drive? Or.. does my flash drive also need an OS to behave as a mini computer?

I know this all sounds like a lot, but I'm just following my nose on this and since I live 2 hrs away from civilizations I want to go to the injured computers prepared.
ALL suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
MajorGeeks is my first stop shopping for computer-what to do nows!!!

 

If there are any you want to use, load away.
I carry AviraAntiVir,SuperAntiSpyware, MalwareBytes, SpywareBlaster, WinPatrol, Comodo Firewall,and several different defraggers. One works better than others on some systems.
Never had a problem with getting them running.
Your thumbdrive should be comparable to a CD disk rather than a PC. No OS needed.

 

A wee tip here for a registry clean , even though you will use the ''Norton'' removal tool you will still need to go to the registry andf manually remove and be prepared for the long haul as Norton goes into every nook and cranny imaginable. Once you have removed all Norton references go back and type symantec and delete all those references.