Boot from USB

Boot from USB

by iltcm! Apr 4, 2009 8:17AM PDT

I currently have an iMac with Windows XP on a Boot Camp Partition. I only have one internal drive (iMac, April 2008 model), so I can only have one Windows partition. I need Windows Vista for work but I still need Windows XP for most of my personal work. I do have an external USB drive; is there a way that I can "fool" the Windows installer into thinking that the external drive is really internal and therefore install & boot Windows from the USB drive? Otherwise, is there a solution that doesn't involve me wiping my Mac OS X startup disk?

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Two issues there.

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Apr 4, 2009 9:19AM PDT

Not only isn't it supported but Windows as it comes from Microsoft does not install or run from USB drives. So not only does Microsoft not support that but also Apple would have to alter Microsoft's OS (and more than one?)

What's wrong with just running Bootcamp? You can boot either OS.
Bob

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Just Bootcamp

by iltcm! Apr 4, 2009 11:09AM PDT

Just bootcamp works fine, but like I said, I need to run both. I only have one system, and new hardware is pretty much out of the question.

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Then go for a Virtual Solution

by mrmacfixit Forum moderator Apr 4, 2009 10:20PM PDT

Get a copy of VM Fusion or Parallels and then you can load as many OS's as your heart desires.

You will, of course, still need a legal copy of Windows, whatever flavor, to install on the virtual machine

P

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Virtual Solution

by iltcm! Apr 5, 2009 12:59AM PDT

I had considered that...Like I said, I already have XP on Bootcamp. If I install Vista using VMware Fusion, can I still boot to it exclusively on startup one way or another? I only have 2 GBs of RAM, and seeing the specs of Vista and what I plan to do, I think I'll need to run Vista exclusively at least some of the time.

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Let me comment on XP, Vista

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Apr 5, 2009 1:15AM PDT

(tips his hand)...

I am authoring a new Windows Mobile application and to do that Microsoft mandated Vista for WinMo 6+. So here I am running Vista whether I want or not.

After 2 months it's actually started to not bug me as much with the incessant UAC requests. Those happen still but not like the first week where I almost turned it off. Since I've moved all my development tools to Vista I have my XP laptop as a backup and a holder of our older Visual Basic 6 applications.

Why run both XP and Vista? I can't find a good reason today.
Bob

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