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Installing XP on external HDD

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Annoyed - Jun 17, 2009 at 06:47 AM
 powertools - Apr 6, 2010 at 03:13 AM
Hello,

When i was reinstalling windows XP on my Presario X1000, my dvd drive failed halfway and thus the installation process is stuck in the middle. Everytime I try to boot, it tries to resume the XP installation but the DVD drive doesn't work.

After about a week's worth of desperate attempts, I finally decided to use my external HDD as my primary boot disk and try to install XP on to the internal HDD once I'm on my external HDD. To use my external hard drive as my primary boot disk, I need to install some OS on my external HDD (to make it a system disk).

Initially, I was faced with a "RAW drive" problem, which I cleared by simply formatting my external HDD in NTFS. I then attached this HDD onto my friend's laptop and tried installing XP on it.

However, after copying the installation files onto the hard drive, the computer restarts (as it's supposed to) and on resuming, I face a dual boot screen with the options:

Windows XP (which is the normal boot on to his laptop HDD)
Windows XP Professional Setup

When I choose the latter, I see the Windows booting screen with the loading bar and after like 4 seconds, I get a STOP error BSOD which ends it all. I am not able to install XP into my external HDD.

I'm in dire straits, please help! :(
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3 replies

Answer 1 / 3
Tiarilir
Jun 17, 2009 at 09:32 AM
An external harddrive is simply a "regular" harddrive put into a converter. Remove the box from the external harddrive and exchange the regular hard drive in your computer with the previous external one.

If this works you can just put in the previous regular drive into the external hard drive converter and there you go.


This is assuming you have a desktop computer.
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Annoyed
Jun 17, 2009 at 12:06 PM
It's a laptop, unfortunately ;(...
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Answer 2 / 3
unws
Aug 15, 2009 at 04:41 PM
this is a little complicated first to solve tyhe problem you need to hit the down arrow fast enough before it tries to continue the installation so just keep clicking the down arrow while the laptop is booting. then choose the old windows usually the one on top the when you are back with your old windows go to the c drive and find the file boot.ini and open it up to edit then edit timeout=0 to timeout=30 to give you time to choose which OS you want first also the boot.ini is hidden so you have to show hidden files in order to see it. then go to this website to see how you are going to fix your mistake http://www.pcland.info/archives/248/how-to-install-windows-xp-on-a-portable-hard-disk-a-tutorial.html
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Answer 3 / 3
powertools
Apr 6, 2010 at 03:13 AM
Sometimes there is a conflict in between of XP and Vista to be loaded to your Converted HDD to an external HDD. Most Laptop these age doesnt fit to boot and load an XP os, if not Vista would be the best OS to be loaded to your HDD. 101% tested.
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