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Vista 64 on external cased internal HDD...

Q

Quadratix

Junior Member
Is this doable?

I have a 32bit laptop and an external harddrive case containing a SATA harddrive. I would like to install a bootable Vista 64bit on it because then I will take the harddrive and use it as an internal desktop drive about a month in the future. I think it would just be convenient to get the OS out of the way....

Is it possible? Is the 32/64 going to be a problem?
 
Vista won't let you install to a USB/Firewire disk so you'll likely need to mess with a PE installation. Unless you have something like an eSATA that Vista won't be able to detect as hotpluggable.

If the laptop really is 32-bit only then there's absolutely no way it'll run a 64-bit OS. A 64-bit processor will run the 32-bit version because the AMD64 spec supports a legacy 32-bit x86 mode but the reverse is impossible.
 
Plainly, no you won't be able to run a 64-bit OS on a pure 32-bit CPU.

Though a question to Nothinman, I vaguely recall something about Microsoft rewriting the USB stack and boot protocol in order to ENABLE installing to external devices. I haven't tried it, but I know this feature appeared in 2k3 SP2, but with the method that they used it was only useful for loading an image to a RAMDISK. I thought they enhanced it for Vista even further.
 
I have no idea, all I know is that Vista's installer will straight up tell you that you can't install it to a USB disk. So if they did fix it then it's still restricted to PE-like environments.
 
That would be one of the most handy things ever...

I had tried to do it with linux for a laptop testing install, but alas, nearly all of the BIOS's on laptops I've ever come across don't support booting from USB. 🙁
 
That's what Knoppix DVDs are for, I believe they even use union mounts now so that you can install stuff into the running system.
 
Originally posted by: SunnyD
Though a question to Nothinman, I vaguely recall something about Microsoft rewriting the USB stack and boot protocol in order to ENABLE installing to external devices. I haven't tried it, but I know this feature appeared in 2k3 SP2, but with the method that they used it was only useful for loading an image to a RAMDISK. I thought they enhanced it for Vista even further.
Click to expand...

I have installed Windows XP to a USB 2.0 Drive and even managed to get it to almost boot once. You have to edit the installation files on the cd so that it will load the USB Drivers etc earlier in the installation process. It is installable this way but I don't think it will boot and run properly.

There is a web site out there (somewhere) that explains what installation files to be edited to allow installation. I just don't remember where it was.

Oh found it:

http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176

These are the files that need to be edited:

TXTSETUP.SIF
DOSNET.INF
USB.IN_
USBPORT.IN_
USBSTOR.IN_


pcgeek11

 
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