Boot XP from a USB HDD

Jonny Wright · 7 Jul 2011 at 11:22

Hi

Im moving to a new company in August, who wont let me install programmes on what is going to be my new works laptop.

Is there any way I could take the HDD out of my curent laptop, put it into a USB enclosure and boot it into windows on the new works laptop to run the programs I currently have on my laptop?

Ben Cole · 7 Jul 2011 at 11:33

Is there any way just to swap HDDs in the laptop? Takes all of about 2 minutes on my Dell.

Jonny Wright · 7 Jul 2011 at 12:01

There is. But I'm not allowed to by the company.

Ben Cole · 7 Jul 2011 at 12:24

Hmmm.

If your laptop allows booting from USB then it might work. Haven't done it myself though.
My Asus EEE can boot from SD card IIRC, could be an option but it's probably slow enough to really annoy you.

paradigm · 7 Jul 2011 at 12:44

Jonny Wright said:
There is. But I'm not allowed to by the company.

Which means you're probably not allowed to do what you are asking either.

Just swap the drives.

Hagar · 7 Jul 2011 at 13:06

You can make a live CD for windows to boot from, so it should be possible to make a bootable USB live version. Look at Bart PE.