resistance to persistence and questions about TCL

[ditrone]

TinyCore-current boots great off 8g usb stick on my machine at 800 mhz with 512 megs of ram and no hard drive.
Everytime i set persistance up though when it boots back up i get just console no x (right after "loading extensions).
Now i am not using the install method or anything.  I am booting off a usb (sdb1) stick with the iso put on it via universal usb installer (a windows thing) (fat32 filesystem). 
I've tried many of the boot options still no x.  This only happens after i press "set" in the package manager and choose my only option of /mnt/sdb1 (down at the bottom of the windows it says /mnt/sdb1/tce/optional)  afterwards i goto logout backup is selected sdb1/tce.  no x after i reboot.

It will do it (no x) if i choose none for backup as well.

So not only am i not getting persistance but i am loosing my gui in the process.
I wanna stick with this distro for this hardware but any sort of persistance alludes me.

On a side note, Should i install TCL on an external usb disk drive instead of just running it off the usb sticks (besides it wearing out the pendrives)? 
Is there anything different about running it off the usb stick or "installing" it?

[tinypoodle]

Third party installers are not supported, see

http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,12235.0.html

[ditrone]

For good reason it seems.  Not only did that solve my problem with persistance,  the machine boots much faster.
Thank you

[tinypoodle]