Windows 7 External HDD Won't Load on Windows 8 Laptop

[osmanre263]

So basically I managed to clean install a new Windows 7 OS on a Western Digital ATA HDD through a desktop. After being able to also set it up as a slave drive to access files on my Windows 8 Laptop, I wanted to see if the laptop could also boot Windows 7 as a USB. I went into BIOS and enabled Legacy Support and changed Boot Order to USB. Then I tried to load windows 7 and it would give me the bluescreen with the 0x07B error. Needless to say I searched around and found I needed a program called PWBoot to enable USB loaded onto the HDD. Now the Windows loading screen completes all the way instead of cutting halfway, but it still gives me the bluescreen for 1 second and then restarts to give me windows repair. However the repair is only windows 8, I will need to use my windows 7 repair disk. ANY HELP WOULD BE APPRECIATED!

 

[USAFRet]

Getting Windows to install to, and boot from, and external USB drive is more complicated than just changing the boot order. There are a few tutorials around as to how to do it, but it is neither trivial or fast.

You can't just take a regular drive, pop it in an external housing, and expect it to boot through the USB.

Why are you trying to do this?

 

[osmanre263]

The original desktop computer already has a main HDD and I don't want to keep hooking up the new windows 7 HDD to it, so I thought "why not just have windows 8 and windows 7 available to me whenever I want on this laptop". I've looked into installing Virtual Box to achieve this but I've failed managing to set it up correctly.

 

[USAFRet]

Right. As said, getting Windows to run from an external drive is a PITA. If it were easy, we'd all be doing it.

What happened with VirtualBox? I use it daily, and find it pretty easy to set up.
Note that each instance of an OS will require it's own license.

 

[osmanre263]

Yes, I have a license that came with my new windows 7 install. Installing a new Virtual Box, Let's say I install a new OS, New Virtual Hard Drive, VDI Image, Dynamic, Whatever Size, And Create it. Now I'm lost on how to set up My External Hard Drive on the OS or use an ISO image to load. I've installed Extension Pack and Enabled USB Controllers. Filters list all unknown devices except my USB mouse. I think my problem might be loading the ISO image, it's 64 bit instead of 32 bit.

 

[USAFRet]

Do you have an install DVD? If not, create one.
Tell virtualbox to use and install from that.

 

[osmanre263]

Thank you very much, that did the trick. All I had to do was enable Intel virtual setting, and allowed me to install the 64 bit version. I appreciate all the help! In the future if someone has a similar problem of booting with USB, any info on where I could find these tutorials? I heard it might have to do with loading the drivers and there is a registry fix for this.

 

[USAFRet]

Thank you very much, that did the trick. All I had to do was enable Intel virtual setting, and allowed me to install the 64 bit version. I appreciate all the help! In the future if someone has a similar problem of booting with USB, any info on where I could find these tutorials? I heard it might have to do with loading the drivers and there is a registry fix for this.

Running Windows from a USB external drive is very much a substandard method. It will be dirt slow.