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Boot from a Windows XP External Hard Drive RRS feed

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    So here's my dilemma:  I have a laptop running Windows 10 Home.  I have been tasked with performing maintenance on an old VB6 app that uses some 3rd party tools that will not install on anything newer than XP.  They gave me an external hard drive that's a clone of the XP machine the original developer used, but I can't get my laptop to boot from it.  I have checked the bios on my laptop and it is set to prioritize USB over the internal drive, but still nothing.  Anyone have any thoughts on how I can get my laptop to boot into XP from the external HD?
    Tuesday, March 26, 2019 1:55 AM
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    What happens when you try to boot?  Does the external drive have the boot loader in sector 0?   Did whoever gave you the drive ever test to see if it loaded on their system?  Did you try using an external boot manager?
    Tuesday, March 26, 2019 3:35 PM
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    Thanks for taking the time to reply.  When I try to boot, it just boots into my main windows 10 partition, and no, they did not test it first.  I will test the other two.  Thanks so much for the help!!
    Wednesday, March 27, 2019 4:33 PM
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    A couple things. With the massive security gap you are presenting I highly encourage you to at least virtualize that XP machine in VMWare if you have it to give it some added security. Beyond that I would make sure the external drive is bootable. Just like a USB someone messing around with it could change it to not be bootable so plug it into your Win 10 machine and use diskpart.exe from a command prompt to select the disk and use the active command to make it bootable. If you need more explanation or that doesn't work let me know.

    Thomas Faherty

    • Proposed as answer by Kiodos Wednesday, March 27, 2019 4:59 PM
    Wednesday, March 27, 2019 4:59 PM
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    YES PLEASE I WOULD LIKE TO MORE ABOUT THAT PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW I SELECT DISK AND ACTIVATE COMMAND TO BOOT IT ..

    Wednesday, May 1, 2019 2:02 PM
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    Depending on if you are working with a new disk or one that has information will change how you should approach making it bootable. 

    Disclaimer: When using diskpart it is possible to lose data. Until you are familiar with it back up your stuff before using it. 

    New disk/USB

    https://www.disk-partition.com/articles/diskpart-create-bootable-usb-3889.html

    Disk/USB with Data

    https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-make-a-partition-bootable-with-diskpart

    Thomas Faherty


    • Edited by Kiodos Wednesday, May 1, 2019 3:36 PM
    Wednesday, May 1, 2019 3:35 PM
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