Dual Boot Win XP From External Drive

Dec 6, 2009

I'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?

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