Windows 7 :: Boot From An External USB Optical Drive

Dual Boot With External Hard Drive Or USB
I 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.

Posted: 1 Week Ago

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External Usb Drive Do Not Appear As An External Device
When I plug in USB external hard drive and also flash drive they show up as devices but do not appear as an external device in My Computer. I have Windows 7 installed on virtual drive but set device to connect to virtual drive and disconnect from host drive. I'vr tried different usb ports and both devices work in host drive which is Vista.

Posted: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 6:02 AM

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Enabling USB Support Has Hidden My External USB Drive
I was building a virtual machine in Windows 7 Virtual PC RC.Â I had the VM on an external drive connected by USB to my host.Â I assumed (incorrectly) that I could enable USB integration of my USB drive in my VM and it would share the drive between the host and the VM. Â

I assumed incorrectly and as soon as I enabled it my host alerted me that it was installing a driver.Â I didn't think much of it, but next my USB drive disappeared from my host. The VM worked for a short time and then froze.Â

I stopped the VM and tried to disconnect/reconnect the USB drive from my host. The drive still didn't show up.Â I uninstalled Virtual PC, still nothing.Â I uninstalled the USB Stub Driver, still nothing.

Posted: Thursday, October 22, 2009 2:49 PM

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External Hard Drive (USB) Not Being Recognized As A Drive
I am having trouble with my external hard drive (USB) not being recognized as a drive. I have a Dell Dim 9200 which was running Vista.Â I upgraded to Windows 7 and now my external hard drive is not recognized.

It is a Venus DB3 enclosure with a WD 500 GB HD.

Under Devices and Printers "Cypress AT2LP (3.03.0000.2)" shows as unspecified.

Everytime I turn the HD on/off the computer recognizes that it was turned on.

Posted: Thursday, November 05, 2009 3:16 PM

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External USB Drive Issue
I have a serious issue regarding to my external USB drive. I have been given a internal SATA drive and I bought a external SATA -> USB 2.0 case.

On my home pc, with Windows 7, he recognize the external hard drive, so I have formatted it to a NTFS partition and I named it. But when I try to attach the drive to my pc at work, which also has Windows 7, he doesn't recognize the drive.

As soon as I attach the drive, he shows up with a error, saying that I must format the drive. But I already have formatted the drive on my own pc at home. When I go to diskmgmt.msc, I see the drive, but it has a RAW extension.

Are my drivers out of date or something like that?

I don't know what it is, does anyone have any idea what it could be?

Posted: Monday, January 04, 2010 8:31 AM

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Installon USB External Hard Drive
I am trying to install windows 7 on an usb attached external hard drive, into a secondary partition. I've tryed installing from an ISO file mounted as a virtual drive, by extracting the files and running the setup file and by booting from the ISO file of a DVD/DR disc. I choose custom install and everytime I get to the point of selecting my installation drive, I get the message "Windows 7 cannot be installed to a USB partioned Hard drive"

I've searvhed help sites and discussion grouips for hours and have not found a single reference to this problem.

I'm currently running Windows 7 beta, but do not want to do an upgrade as I have several existing problems (virus and registry related) so when I'm ready to do the install I want it to be a new install vs an upgrade. Before I wipe my entire drive for the new install, I wanted to install and run the latest win 7 OS on my secondary hard drive to make sure I like it, and if I have any major issues.

Posted: 10-30-2009

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External USB Drive Initiatied To Late
Last weekend I switched from Vista to Windows 7. Unfortunately I noticed some problem with my external USB drive: WD MyBook 320 Gb. When I log in, in 75% of trials there is a pop-up that new storage device was found (the same when you put USB flash into your PC).

Strange, because the disk is plugged into USB all the time... It means that when I log in just for a second the system does not see the drive, which has some some nasty consequences:

- shortcuts directing to files on external drive are damaged

- outlook cannot open archive folders on external drive (I have Outlook in autostart)

- at startup system cannot reopen explorer windows (path not found)

- etc.

After this faulty second everything is normal, i.e.disk are discovered properly and the are working well.

I tried to turn on login password (to give system more time), but it didn't help. This issue appeared neither in XP nor in Vista. Then I played with msconfig and unfortunately it didn't work. When starting in selective mode (startup items off, all non-Microsoft services off) approx. 50% trials

I think that folks at MS wanted Windows 7 to boot faster so external usb drivers are initiated after logging in.

resulted in the popup.

Is there any way to make system discover external drive sooner?

Posted: 10-08-2009

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External USB Drive Not Reachable Only Discoverable
I have the following problem with Windows 7 Ultimate build 7127, (upgraded from 7100 within this build i havn't test this problem) it is not possible to connect to the USB drive connected to a WRT610N router, i can not map a directory only network discovery display's the external diskdrive.

When i try to connect i get the Error code: more data available or Error code: 0X80070035 The network path was not found. with 1 laptop with XP and 2 Vista laptop's everything works fine?

I think i have found the problem, right click on computer, advanced system settings,choose Tab Computer Name,then Network ID, what i see is that the option This computer is a part of a business network is enabled.

So i choose the option This is a home computer not connected to a business network. Then Next and Finish. Restart the system. Again i go in Network ID and see that nothing is changed. I'm still a part of a business network?

Posted: 09-06-2009

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WD My Book USB External Hard Drive
Can't get any info out of Western Digitial's website, other than USB drivers are loaded automatically by windows.Â UHH this is Win7 and I can't get the Win7 to load/recognize this My Book External drive.I did some searching around and found a reference to "disk management" in "services" but can't find it in win7.

Posted: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 10:23 AM

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Win 7 Rc Will Not Detect External USB Drive
Just installed the RC on my desktop, I've been using the Beta,Â after the install my external hard drive is not detected.Â When I turn it on or plug the USB cable in, the RC tries to load drives for it, but it fails.Â Any ideas?Â I also tried to plug it into my laptop, I get an error message, (USB device is not recognized), and shows up as an unknown device in the USB root hub.

The laptop is a Fujitsu A1120, Vista Home Premium 64bit, 4GBRAM, 300GB hdd, Intel Core 2 Duo T6400.

The desktop is MSI K9A2 Neo-F, AMD Phenom 9950, 8GB RAM, 80GB & 500GB hdd's.

Posted: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 4:02 PM

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External Hard Drive Wiebetech USB 2.0 Is Not Accessible
I have a Dell Dimension 9100 which I recently upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7 (Home Premium). Before the upgrade, I transferred all of my data, pictures, etc. to my Wiebetech USB 2.0 connected Fire800 external hard drive because I wanted to do a clean install.

On XP, the extermal drive worked flawlessly with no additional installation, driver updates or tweaks necessary to make it work.

But, since upgrading to Windows 7, I now cannot access it. I see it in the list of devices, but, under the Computer menu, it does not show up as an available drive.

When I go to disk management, I see the following prompt: "You must initialize the disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it." Given that all of my data is on that drive, initializing is not really an option.

Is there any other way to get this to work?

Posted: Sunday, November 01, 2009 5:43 PM

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External USB HD - Win 7 Stops Communicating With Drive
I'm using the 64-bit version of Windows 7 RC1.Â I have attached a 1 TB Seagate External HD via USB.Â The drive has a green light that indicates when it is on and blinks when data is being transferred.Â I've run into a problem where Windows seems to stop communicating with the drive.Â This happens when there has been a period of inactivity but the PC or the drive has not hibernated.

For example, I loaded a spreadsheet (Excel 2007) from the USB drive and worked on it for roughly 1 hour.Â The PC did not hibernate during that time nor was there an extended period of inactivity.Â After working on the spreadsheet I clicked the Disk Icon to save the file.Â Excel seemed to lock up and Not Responding appeared at the top of the screen.

I then tried to access the drive in other ways but I could not.Â I tried accessing the Disk Management application and that seemed to hang.Â All this time the green light on the USB drive was lit but it never blinked to indicate access.Â As a last resort I unplugged the USB drive.Â When I did, Excel responded with a disk full message and Disk Management Console began working.

I plugged the USB drive back in and everything returned to normal.Â I was able to successfully save the spreadsheet to the USB drive.

Has anyone else experienced the problem?Â It is almost like the drive goes to sleep and will not wake-up or that Windows stops communicating with the drive after a period of inactiviity.

Posted: Sunday, June 21, 2009 12:32 AM

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External Western Digital USB Drive Crash
I plug in a Western Digital external USB 2.0 drive (Usually sold at Costco) Don't have the model but as soon as I plug it in, I got a blue screen of death! I thought that was the end of the blue screen. I believe this is normal since the pool of plug and play drivers it's probably not up to date with all the various divices out there. I have plug in my Kanguru drive and Kingston flash drive without any problems.

Posted: Â Â Â Â Â 05-30-2009

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Can I Install Win 7 Onto An External USB Hard Drive ?
i've seen otherÂ answers to the questionÂ and I did managed to use it successfullyÂ with Windows XP with an external USB HDD. I would not recommend it on a thumbdrive (flash memory) beccause the temp file usage will kill the drive in days or weeks. But the external HDD works great. I can't provide all the exact details on how to do it, so please don't ask, but here's an excellent reference as a starting point for you: http://www.911cd.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=14181

The only thing you have to remember is that, in spite of dire warnings about how impossible it is, it actually can be done and works just great.

Posted: Saturday, December 05, 2009 4:00 AM

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USB HDD Problem - External Drive Cannot Be Accessed
Loaded Windows 7 x64 Home PremiumÂ upgrade onto new Toshiba laptop. When I finished I could no longer access any of my external hard drives. I have 7 of them. Some have Fat32 and some are NTFS. When I plug them in or turn them on the PC beeps but I cannot view the drive in "Computer". My Logitech wirelessÂ mouse is hooked up through a USB port and it works fine.

Called Toshiba Support and after three hours they came to the conclusion that it appears to be a software problem as the hardware recognizes that a drive has been connected to the USB Port. They are going to call me back later today when hopefully I have a response from you.

Toshiuba had me update system BIOS to the most current version. Even tried to "initialize" one ofÂ my External drivesÂ in Device Manager...No luck. I did notice today that a little yellow flag now appears on the "USB Mass Storage Device" in the Device Manager. Message in "Properties"..."This device cannot start. (Code 10)".

Posted: Thursday, November 05, 2009 4:56 PM

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USB 1.5T HDD External Drive Stopped Working
I recently built a new computer and everything worked great with Windows 7.Â I then installed a Seagate 1.5 T external hard drive which also worked great for about a week and then Windows doesn't even see the hard drive anymore.Â I'm not sure what changed but it just stopped recognizing the drive.Â I have tried different USB ports and it says it failed to install driver.Â I have also tried to manually install the USB drivers again.Â All my other USB devices work just fine but it stopped to recognize the external drive.Â What other possible solutions can I do?Â My computer specs are:

4 GB DDR SDRAM
160 GB 7200 RPM SATA HDD
GeForce 9500 1GB PCI Express Video
2.7 GHz AMD Dual-core processor
Foxconn AMD 2 780G Motherboard
500W ATX Power Supply

Posted: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 5:55 PM

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Dual Boot With External Hard 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??

Posted: 05-01-2009

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Dual Boot Win XP From External Drive
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?

Posted: 12-06-2009

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User Profile Folder In A External Usb Drive Protected With B
I'm running windows 7 in a primary disk. I have a profile folder in a external usb disk encrypted with bitlocker.

Every time i boot windows, i log in with a temporary profile folder because my external drive is locked. I enabled auto unlocking for the current user, but still the same problem.

I need that my usb drive get unlocked before i log in in order to have my profile loaded successfully. How can i do it?

Posted: Monday, October 12, 2009 9:41 PM

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External USB Hard Drive Access Lags And Hangs
I have a USB 2.0 external drive (Western Digital My Book Essential) that has been giving me some problems in the last few months.

I use this disk for my documents, music and general archives, so data access is usually seldom and isolated. The thing is that when I try to do multiple tasks on the drive (read and/orÂ write), like listening music in winamp and opening an explorer window to copy a file from the drive, Explorer lags and actually hangs (other windows and mouse functions properly). Another example is when trying to copy multiple files, even sequentially - it takes forever, even with teracopy. Also, it is not random behaviour.

I don't know what triggered this, but I guess it has something to do with the motherboard drivers (abit Fatal1ty FP-IN9 SLI), which is based off aÂ nvidia 650i SLI chipset.

Posted: Sunday, August 02, 2009 6:51 PM

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Installing Win7 Beta On External Hard Drive USB 2.0
Is it possible to install the beta on an external hard drive andÂ use it to boot instead of the internal hard drive?Â In order to install it,Â I was thinking that if the internal hard drive(s) were removed, the DVD would have no place to install it other than the external hard drive.

Yes, i understand that runningÂ an OS from a USB device is slower than using an internal, I would just like to know if it is possible, and if so, how does one go about doing such a thing..

Posted: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 2:03 PM

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External USB / 1394 Hard Drive - Devmgmt.msc
I use a AcomData Ondango 160GB External Hard Drive (http://acomdata.com/hdp/fs.html)Â withÂ both USB and 1394 interfaces and a DC power option.Â The drive uses a USB cable that daisy-chains two USB host connectors for bus powering.

I am running Win7 Ultimate x86 (b7000) on aÂ LiveBook Zephyr (made byÂ specialty OEM Rain Recording) with dual Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz CPUs and 4GB RAM.

When I connect the drive with the two USB host ports, it turns on, Win7 sees it, but fails to classify it as a USB Mass Storage Device.Â Instead, it classifies it as a "USB 2.0 PC Camera" and reports that it cannot install without the drivers.Â Unfortunately, the drive is supposed to be natively supported by any Windows version past 98SE...so I can't force install the driver because it doesn't exist.

I've gone through all the steps I've known in the past to deal with these types of things - uninstall from devmgmt.msc, re-scan, try re-installing using different options...the only thing I haven;t done yet ias powering it via DC instead of bus powering.Â However, I just plugged a friend's external bus powered USB drive into the same ports and it showed up just fine.

Any suggestions/similar problems?

Posted: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 7:39 PM

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Backup Failing To External USB Drive With Error 0x810000FF
Since installing Windows 7, I have not been able to successfully backup to my external Seagate Free Agent drive. The error that appears is 0x810000FF. There is plenty of space on the drive, and I had previously used it for backup with no problems on Windows XP with OneCare.i've simplified the backup so that all it should only backup My Documents and My Pictures - it still fails.

I verified that the drive was already formatted as NTFS, and that my backup settings didn't include imaging the system drive. After trying the backup again without changing either of these settings, I was able to successfully backup. Weird - perhaps the error was some kind of transient error.

Posted: Sunday, January 03, 2010 4:53 PM

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Error Code 0x81000019 Backing Up On External Usb Drive
Using Windows 7 Professional 64 bit control panel backup and restore, backup consistently fails with the subject error.

The Event Viewer/Windows logs/Application log shows multiple VSS errors.

The suggested correction is to change the VSS service to manual so it may support backup.Â The VSS service is in manual.

The external drive has no errors and has over 500 GB of free space.

Posted: Thursday, November 12, 2009 11:37 PM

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Problems Disconnecting From External Usb Drive ( Roland Mv-8000 )
I am experiencing trouble on both ends of hooking my roland mv-8000 to win7.Â

This connect seemingly fine initially, then I try to disconnect.

1) I select eject usb drive (mv-8000) from windows system bar, ok!
2) I tell my MV to disconnect, it says cannot disconnect connection still active.
3) So I unplug the connection manually (could be bad??)
4) Attempt to reconnect again windows says 'USB device not recognized'Â Full reboot of both systems will let me start over again.

Roland MV hosts a internal fat32 40gb hd, things work fine on winxp sp3.

Posted: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 7:54 PM

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Unable To Install Win 7 On External Usb Hard Drive
Connected the external 160GB SATA hard drive using USB cable to Lenovo R61 laptop. Bootup the laptop with Windows 7 RC setup DVD disc. The Windows 7 installation recognised the external hard drive but when installing a the point to select the external hard drive as destination hard drive in custom setup, an error message prompted saying Windows 7 could not install on hard drive connected by usb. Inserted the external hard drive into the laptop and install Windows 7 without problem.

Then took out the imaged hard drive and put it back into the external hard drive enclosure, connected back to the laptop and boot up from external hard drive. Got prompted to repair. After repair successful, Windows 7 kept reboot and prompted for repair. My questions are (1) any way to install Windows 7 to external hard drive connecting by usb? and (2) any way to rescue the image that already in the external hard drive so that it can bootup normally?

Posted: Friday, July 03, 2009 7:36 PM

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Can't Access External Hard Drive On A Usb Case
I am using windows 7 beta, and I am trying to access my external drive.Â Originally, it was compatible with linux, thus it was reformatted for the new windows format.Â The drive is in a usb case.Â My laptop will recognize the device as a mass storage device in the device manager, however, I cannot for the life of me access it.Â Also, when I look it up through the "my computer" icon, it will not show up at all.Â I have updated all drivers I can think of.Â I also tried finding it using the "easy transfer files" program.

Posted: Tuesday, March 17, 2009 4:55 AM

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Win 7 Keeps On Reporting USB External Drive Missing Or Corrupt
My New pc with windows 7 Home Premium x64 is having Major issues with My Maxtor Basics 1Tb external drive.

this drive is working fine with any other PC I have tried it with so I am certain it is not an issue with the drive.

basically the only way, I can get my drive to be recognized is by power cycling it.

Once I have done this I am asked to run chkdsk and the drive works ok until either it goes into sleep mode or I reboot the PC.

once either of these things happen when I try to access the drive I get an error - usually drive in inaccessible but sometime I am asked to format.

When ever this happens if I power cycle the drive It can be seen again fine.

Hardware:

Packard Bell Imedia X4520 UK
3GB DDR Ram
Nvidia 7100/610i chipset.
Extenal drive Maxtor Basics 1TB Model 9Nz2D8-500

I have tried the latest 15.49 drivers for the Nvidia 7050/610i chipset

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_vista_win7_64bit_15.49.html

and also tried the Hotfix for the data transfer issue and Nvidia Chipset from here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976972

I have also tried deleting the usb drivers and the mass storage driver and allowing them to re-detect.

But none of these has resolved my issue. It looks like there is an issue with the usb mass storage driver waking the drive or acessing it for the first time on boot up.

Posted: Sunday, January 03, 2010 11:58 AM

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External USB Hard Drive Detected, But Not Shown In Computer
Win 7 RC 64 bit freshly installed. I have files on a usbÂ external drive that I want to transfer over to the computer. When I plugged the external drive into the usb port, I got a message that the drivers were installed and everything was working properly. But when I went to "Computer", the drive wasn't shown. I checkedÂ "Devices and Printers" and it was shown there as working properly.Â

The files were from a Vista machine, if that makes a difference.

As a work around, I have connected the External Drive to a Vista Laptop and am wirelessly transferring the files (about 50 GB) very slowly - it's been running about 6 hours at this time with much more to transfer. In order to transfer the files, I had toÂ mark them asÂ shared on the Vista. Â Â

Posted: Friday, August 14, 2009 7:22 PM

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Boot From An External USB Optical Drive

Does anyone know if it is possible to boot from an external USB optical drive?