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acreech
April 6th, 2009, 06:11 AM
I know that this is probably not the forum to give me help with windows ;-) but I thought I would see if anyone could tell me if this is possible.

I have been on Ubuntu for almost 1 year and love it. My wife, who rarely uses my computer, would like to be able to use a windows machine on about 3 occasions per year. I have Windows XP installed on a seperate hard drive. I would like to put that in an external enclosure and then boot to it on those 3 occasions (I am too lazy to remove my hard drive from my laptop and then install the other hard drive).

when I try to put to the Windows hard drive I get an error. If I install the hard drive internally in the laptop then it boots up with out any problems.

is there a way to put that Windows hard drive in an external enclosure and boot to it?

Thanks for any suggestions.

acreech

linuxuser21
April 6th, 2009, 06:18 AM
Installing it on the hard drive would probably be your best option. From my experience with Windows, it doesn't being moved around on hard drives. The problem you're probably having is that it was installed on a hard drive/ partition "most likely C:". The hard drive you're booting it off of would have to be the letter name that you installed it on. There's going to be another number of problems with it also though.

linuxuser21
April 6th, 2009, 06:24 AM
Another problem is that when you install it, Windows retrieves the proper drivers and sets itself up for that one computer. So, if you move it to another computer, it screws it up.

acreech
April 6th, 2009, 06:30 AM
ya. I am having some issues with drivers. It does not recognize the ethernet, atheros newtworkk card, video.......... After being on Ubuntu for a year, windows seems to be a real problem.

linuxuser21
April 6th, 2009, 06:35 AM
ya. I am having some issues with drivers. It does not recognize the ethernet, atheros newtworkk card, video.......... After being on Ubuntu for a year, windows seems to be a real problem.

I know exactly what you mean. It's not as easy as just throwing some hardware into your computer, you have to put the drivers on it before you put it in. XP is the best Windows version with this type of thing though as far as compatibility goes.