[half-solved] BSOD - Dual boot W7 - external hdd

**alex-lleroux1** · February 10th, 2014

Hey,

First of all, I'm not a native speaker nor writer, so please try to get over my writing skills.

Secondly, I've asked this on several forum windows forum but the answer where quite closed minded, i hope the Ubuntu community won't deceive me

I've installed a ssd in my laptop a month ago and as the space on it is quite limited i didn't invest time to install/clone Windows as my main OS is under Linux.

The initial idea was to boot from the old hard drive mounted as an external one when i would like to use it (quite sheldom to game). Indeed when i boot, GRUB load (the interface which allow to chose between linux or windows) i have no problem booting my old Linux, but Windows crash. First there is a message about a hard-drive change, after that i have two possibilities :

repair the system → do not detect any installation
boot → BSOD ( and I cannot read anything it reboot immediately )

Here are the result from a boot-info made from linux: http://paste.ubuntu.com/6832114/

Any help would be likely appreciated

**oldfred** · February 10th, 2014

Windows does not boot from external drives.

It builds in checkers to make sure you only run it on the system you installed it into, so you cannot use it on an external that you might use with a different PC.

**alex-lleroux1** · February 11th, 2014

That's what i though but i booted by "mistake" some years ago W7 from a hdd i wanted to recover. But w7 was installed on my internal hdd.

Is a virtual machine installed on the external hdd is a solution? How can i know how much capacities running the VM will take ( as my notebook is already 4years old). I'm aware i'll be quite slow

**sudodus** · February 11th, 2014

Originally Posted by alex-lleroux1

That's what i though but i booted by "mistake" some years ago W7 from a hdd i wanted to recover. But w7 was installed on my internal hdd.

Is a virtual machine installed on the external hdd is a solution? How can i know how much capacities running the VM will take ( as my notebook is already 4years old). I'm aware i'll be quite slow

Yes, it is a solution. But Microsoft considers the virtual machine to be another machine than the bare metal machine, so you need another license for it. On the other hand, such an installation in a virtual machine is probably portable (I think you can port the virtual machine from one bare metal machine to another, at least it was possible with Windows XP).

It will be slower, of course. A machine with core2duo and 4 GB RAM will work fairly well. 2 GB RAM will be tight.

**alex-lleroux1** · February 12th, 2014

Ok thanks you

i think i'll go for a VM, except if it exist a way to trick windows at boot. I read on a blog that it's possible to remove a license from a computer, i'll try that ( but need to swap my HDD ...).

Does anyone have a good tutorial and information about virtual machines ? i never used that before

edit:i have 4gb RAM and a dual core 1,3ghz so i guess it will work.