Seems like a simple problem, but no avail so far. Need to boot laptop from USB external HD to reinstall Win7. Laptop is 64 bit, CD/DVD drive is inoperable, copy of Win7 setup is on USB HD.
View 1 RepliesDoes anyone know if it is possible to boot from an external USB optical drive?
View 2 Replies View RelatedWe just bought a WD 2TB My Book Elite external hard drive. When we boot the computer into Windows 7 and plug in the USB cable, the drive is recognized and assigned a drive letter. Everything looks normal--we can access the drive, read files on it, copy files to it, etc. However, next time we power up the computer, if this drive is attached, the computer won't boot. The Dell BIOS splash screen comes up and sits there for a while, then the screen goes black--and absolutely nothing else happens. If we then disconnect the drive and start the computer again, it boots normally. The external drive has the latest firmware and software installed, and we have the most current BIOS installed.
View 9 Replies View RelatedI've just got a new HP laptop with windows 7 Home Premium.
Anytime Upgraded to Ultimate.
i want to boot to windows XP (SP2) on this new laptop..(Not necessarily Dual-Boot). there is only on program i need to use under XP.
the dual-booting tutorials here are quite in depth and potentially problematic for none techie like me. i would prefer not re-partion the drive and 'hide' one operating system from the other, so what i would prefer to do is this...
1. Plug in an External hard drive (USB 2.0).Clean and factory formatted.
2. Go into my BIOS > Disable boot from internal hard drive > enable boot from CD Drive (first)
3. Exit BIOS having saved changes
4. insert win XP Install disk in drive.
So, in theory XP Install should be like on a brand new machine.
when i want to use windows 7 i would reverse the BIOS changes and make sure external drive with XP is not connected.
So, windows 7 would not know XP is even in use.
Is all this viable... or is there something that would prevent it from working?
I have a HDD that has Windows 7 installed on it. I want to connect this drive to another machine, and boot it as a virtual machine. (i.e. boot the OS on the drive in another OS on machine #2).
View 8 Replies View RelatedI've got a XP Pro laptop I'm about to decommission but I've got programs I don't want to lose. I know there are programs that claim to be able to bring programs over from one machine to another but the results don't live up to the claims. I was wondering if I could take the hard drive out, place it in an enclosure and boot from it on my new Win7 Home Premium laptop when I want to use my existing XP programs. Alternately, I have my old laptop C drive backed up using Acronis. Could I "restore" it to a new partition on my Win 7 machine. I know that certain things like hardware drivers etc. won't work as it, but if the programs worked, that'd be fine with me. The rest could be worked on as needed.
View 4 Replies View RelatedI am planning to move to another country and do not want to transport my desktop Win XP system.If I were to buy a new laptop maching can I set up the hard drive from my desktop, as an external device,so that the new laptop can boot from that external drive? My XP drive is SATA.I really did not know how to categorize this question so I Windows 7, assuming the new laptop would have that OS.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI have mini dell laptop. The laptop was hit with a bad virus it was wiped out so I am trying to reinstall windows 7 so need to know how to reboot it from a external drive.
View 2 Replies View Relatedwindows 8 release preview has expired, now i need to go back to windows 7, which requires a "clean install", Now the problem is that windows 8 restarts every two hours because of the expiration, making it impossible for me to backup my pc, I tried hirens boot cd, loaded mini xp, but it doesn't pick up my external HDD, which i want to copy my files to
View 5 Replies View RelatedI have a Dell Inspiron 1440 laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. Some of my older applications do not support this platform. My processor does not support Window Virtual PC and Windows XP mode so I was hoping to add XP as a dual boot. Is it possible to boot XP from an external harddrive or USB instead of having to partition the internal hard drive. Or do you have any suggestions on how I can load XP after Windows 7 is already loaded.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI am trying to boot from an external esata hdd through an esata express card. I can set the boot priority to ata hdd2 however it will not boot from it because it does not list my hdd id next to it. HDD 1 internal does however, show the hdd id next to it and obviously has no problem booting from it.
View 7 Replies View RelatedI'd like to boot a Win 7 laptop from an external hard drive with XP and software installed. Probably use a USB port input from the drive through an adapter. Is it possible to boot XP that way and read and write personal files on the drive? The drive is eSATA and is Windows 7 compatible.
View 5 Replies View RelatedI have windows 7 with a Verbatim 1TB external drive, the system is not recognising the external drive. When I switch it off and back on again it then recognises it and loads it in My Computer. I have another external USB drive which works just fine. This problem started after I formatted the PC and reinstalled windows 7. It worked fine before under the same OS. I tried another wire and plugged it into another port but still have the same problem.
View 9 Replies View RelatedI am having difficulty getting my computer to install Windows 7 from an external hd. take a look through the steps I followed below, I believe I may have missed something very basic (I'm not a power user).
1.I put an iso image of windows 7, 32bit onto my computer
2.downloaded/installed 'easeUSpartition master'; used it to shink the partition w/with data on external hd, created a new partition of the free space remaining on the hd; set new partition as 'active'.
3.used magic iso to extract files from the iso image of windows 7 32 bit installer onto the active partition that was created from the free space on the external hd.
4.reset computer, on startup went into bios, set USB flash drive to #1 position of boot order, set setting to 'enable boot from external drive', saved and exited.
5.on subsequent restarts, the computer restarts as it normally does, I do not see any messages during startup (e.g. 'push any key to boot from external drive').
can I dual boot using an ext. Hard drive. I found an old 250gb phanton hd I've never used. Figured I could throw it in there. Would vista dual boot to that. Or no??
View 2 Replies View RelatedOne of my Dell systems took a dive (no power, etc.) so I pulled out the hard drive and hooked it up to this Dell Vostro 260 so the person could have access to their files. I've checked the BIOS to boot from it, but nope, doesn't work. The system goes black, little cursor for a moment then asks me if I want to run repair to start normally. I've tried repair and normally but still can't boot from this external. The system does see it, so I'm really not sure what to do
View 13 Replies View RelatedMy Acer netbook has developed some kind of fault and I am unsure as to what I ought to do. The netbook does boot to BIOS and also will boot up from an external drive...but will not boot normally. I am thinking of replacing the hard drive but don't know if there could be something else wrong. It says sometimes that it can't read it and from this I am not sure if there is something else wrong. If I change the drive does it sound as though things will work? There are also a couple of other intermittent faults such as certain letters and numbers not working and then everything is fine for a while...
View 4 Replies View RelatedI run win 7 sp1 on dell inspiron 1520 Its dvd-writer was damaged, so i bought an external Transcend dvd-writer and its working properly but when i insert a bootable cd in it and want to boot the windows from it, the windows does not recognize it and boots normally from internal hard driver as usuall. I am sure the cd is bootable and have tested it in other systems.
View 7 Replies View Relatedis it possible to boot windows directly from external HDD, not internal disk? (i have WD 500G) (because my internal disk is damaged..)i decided to install win 7 in the external HDD.
View 9 Replies View RelatedI just restarted my PC and i kept getting erros regarding hardware, at first it would just hold at updating dmi pool , after i reset the bios to fail safe defaults it would then give me the I/O error. I noticed my external drive was turned off and I turned it on and windows booted fine. Is there a connection here i can disable?
Windows is installed on my SSD drive not my external.
I've just had a new mother board installed in my tower, now it's a Pent 4 3.4g. I used to have my two external HDD's connected to the old system configuration but now at startup, when it gets to Auto-Detecting External HDD's it takes for ever to do anything. I have to unplug them, then do a reboot and all is fine, but then have to plug them back in again.
I know from reading some post's that it's in the BIOS startup sequence but I'm not quite sure where and what to change in the startup.
In the BIOS Boot Device Priority I have: 1st - Floppy Drive, 2nd - [3M-ST3200800AS], 3rd - [ATAPI CD-ROM], 4th - [Disabbled].
What happened to my computer is, I kept getting the BSOD, I went into safe mode, removed the most recent programs I had installed, and it stopped happening. I then proceeded to plug in my external hard drive. It was not recognizing it for some reason, so I went to disk management. It was listed there, just without a drive letter. I tried to assign it a drive letter, and it gave me an error message saying something about refreshing the list, (this is the error message I should have researched), I tried refreshing the drive list, and tried reassigning the drive letter, same message. I right clicked on the drive again, and I saw mark as active. For some stupid reason, I clicked on this. Then seeing that it didn't do anything, I thought maybe restarting the computer would maybe do the trick. Now my computer won't boot.
It gets to the windows logo, and boom, restarts all over again. I tried many things like, startup repair, system restore, marking partition as active CMD, with diskpart, I also tried some of the commands in bootrec.exe. By the way, if this helps at all, my hard drive is a solid state drive, I also have a slave drive in there which does also have a copy of windows installed on it, (it was my old hard drive), I tried setting that as my primary boot and it boots into my old install of windows, before i got my solid state drive. Is there a way I can fix the startup by having access to it from an operating system instead of the recovery environment?
Can I boot my Windows 7 or XP PC into a USB mode where the computer can be used simply as an external USB drive? Mac has this feature and it can be very convenient for large file transfers.how do I connect two PC to swap the files. Win 7 to XP?
View 5 Replies View RelatedI had an issue where Windows 7 would not boot anymore, getting error, BOOTMGR missing, Press Alt-Ctrl-Del to restart. I have tried to repair with windows disk but still getting error. I have decided that I want to just do a reinstall but I want to get on and export my favorites and grab a couple other things. I used to have a CD that I could use to boot up with (Think it was called Barts Boot Disk, Been too long) to get into Windows XP and do a couple things. My question is, is what is the best boot disk that will allow me to copy files from the HD to my external drive before I refresh?
View 4 Replies View RelatedIs it possible to dual boot windows 7 and ubuntu, with ubuntu on a external hard drive? I can connect my external hard drive via USB 2.0, USB 3.0 or E-SATA. I want windows 7 as my main OS.
View 8 Replies View RelatedI have a Dell Inspiron 1545 (2.5 years old). All my data is backed up so I have no concerns about recoverying data.First, the laptop crashed and ran several chkdsk on start up. I froze several times during this. It said it had fixed some errors then started up again.This time it wanted to do start up repair. Same thing kept happening, froze at least twenty times during this. Eventually it gave me the blue screen of death.
'Technical information
*** STOP: 0x000000F4 (0x0000000000000003, 0xFFFFFA8004C1D260, 0xFFFFFA8004C1D498, 0xFFFFF8000130DDA0)'
This repeated several times. I ran the diagnostics and it told me the hard drive could not be found (error code 0146, 2000-0146). Essentially, it's a Dell laptop (I know) and I am not bothered about recovering the hard drive.I would, however, like to install Windows 7, or alternatively Linux, onto my external hard drive. But I just can't seem to get it to work.I have extracted a Linux iso to the external hard drive I want to install on, onto a cd, onto a FAT32 8gb usb stick, but it has given me the bootmgr is missing error every time. I have tried it with the interal HDD in and removed.I am no longer concerned about the internal HDD, i can use it for a door stop for all I am concerned, I just want to load ANY os onto my external hard drive so I can get the laptop working.
my desktop computer won't boot. When I turn it on it displays the welcome splash screen and then goes black. A message will then display that says CMD failed to start and then it will shut down. It does the same thing in safe mode as well.My question is. I have already set up the HD from the desktop as an external to my laptop so I could get files off it. Is there any way to do system restore on the hard drive when it is set as an external? Because I did this last night and I think if I restore the drive it will fix it.
View 2 Replies View RelatedA while ago I was using Windows XP Pro on my laptop. I was then forced to switch completely to Windows 7, but because I had so many application and configurations done on the XP, I created a VHD from it (using this) before replacing it. Now, I want to know if its possible to set that VHD beside my current OS as dual boot.I searched and found solutions, but those are either to add a new VHD (Windows 8 mostly) to the dual boot, or loading VHD in virtual machines.Also, if it is possible, can I copy the VHD on my external HDD and load it every time from there?The whole idea is because my laptop is not so powerful and it wouldn't handle VMs very well. Because of the same reason, XP Mode is not an option.Normal dual boot also is not preferred for two reasons:
1. I want my configurations which are already set on the VHD,
2. My laptop's HDD is only 150GB which does not have too much capacity left already. I can spare like 20-30GBs for XP, but I really cannot deal with the dual booting mess now! I will rarely use the XP for specific tasks, so VHD would be much easier if I will have the option.
I have three external drives, and every time I boot now, they show up as "found," as if I'd just put in a USB drive.....meaning I have to close them all each and every time. Not a serious issue, just an annoyance I'd like to avoid. How can I set it so that they are not "found" each time?
View 6 Replies View RelatedI have an asus UL30A laptop computer, running windows 7 64 bit home premium. I recently had an external HDD fail, so I tried running a few restoration progs on it, most recently "Testdisk" I think it was. Now I dont know if they're related, but since running, on the next reboot, when I turn on my laptop, I get the message "reboot and select boot device". I checked BIOS settigs and restoring them etc, but nothing. So I inserted the manuafacturers recovery disk and inserted in into my external dvd drive and in bios selected boot from this drive. It loaded up, gave me the options to install on 1st partition, both partions etc. I tried one option, then another, and i got the word "ERROR" in big red writing! What the heck have I done? I really don't have the money at present to be going to a repair shop, thus I came here.
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