[lifeofbrian]

Is it possible to boot from a external operating system?(windows xp sp2)I have taken the hard drive from inside my p.c. and put it in an external case.I set the jumpers for master(and i also tried no jumpers),and set the bios to boot first from external hdd,but all i get is ntldr missing,press ctrl+alt+del to reboot.I would love to sort this out,i am a musician and it would be great if i could just take the external hard drive round to another persons house and have all my music progs there.Am i wasting my time.PLEASE HELP!

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Hello, and welcome to Geeks To Go.
When Windows is installed on to a computer it generates a unique number.
This number is based on the hardware of the computer, as well as Windows itself.
When you change the hardware, Windows will not boot.
Changing the hardware would include; putting a different motherboard in, putting the hard drive in a different computer, or even making drastic changes to other hardware.
You can boot from a USB drive if the BIOS is set properly. In your case Windows is seeing a different hardware setup and will not boot.

[hfcg]

Hello, and welcome to Geeks To Go.
When Windows is installed on to a computer it generates a unique number.
This number is based on the hardware of the computer, as well as Windows itself.
When you change the hardware, Windows will not boot.
Changing the hardware would include; putting a different motherboard in, putting the hard drive in a different computer, or even making drastic changes to other hardware.
You can boot from a USB drive if the BIOS is set properly. In your case Windows is seeing a different hardware setup and will not boot.

[Tyger]

You can't do that with Windows, for the reasons hfcg gave, but you can do it with Linux. You might want to check out Dyne:bolic Linux, which is on a CD, you download the image file and burn it to a CD. It was designed for musicians and DJs. There is also Musix Linux.

[Ztruker]

You can boot from a external USB hard drive or flash drive, but Your BIOS must support booting from a USB device. If you meet this criteria then see this series of articles for information on how to do this:

http://www.informati...cleID=177102101

Also here: http://www.vandombur...-usb#disclaimer

The last link provided by Steve here: http://www.annoyance...xp/1176390597?s