Installing a local server on a usb stick for the purpose of viewing different websites made with Joomla and WordPress

Trying to install XAMPP on a usb stick has not been so straight forward as the instructions make it seem. I downloaded the latest wampp file and installed it onto my usb, this went as instructed okay. I then opened wampp and started apache and sql, no problems and when I went http://localhost/, it showed all was working fine.
Downloaded and installed joomla into the htdocs folder as instructed, and then created a database, no problems here so installed joomla and all went well. But then when I tried to view the site I got an error about line 422 .
Tried installing wordpress using the same method and I couldnt even access mysql, so after a few hours of downloading, installing and configuring, I deleted the whole wampp folder.

I may just have to use my own web host for design purposes