Boot from USB HDD

[peong]

Recently my desktop always giving me much problems, so I have a thought of use back the existing HDD to boot from my laptop instead. I had checked my laptop's BIOS settings and it allows me to set booting from USB HDD, so I bought a HDD casing with USB cable connected to my laptop and start booting from the USB HDD. Well, it start booting from the USB HDD, but unfortunately, it can't goes into windows (My is XP SP2), it always leads me to the Advanced Boot Options menu, even I tried on "Safe Mode" booting still will leads me to this menu. Why? Did anyone have the same experience and like to share how you finally solved this problem? Thanks

 

[Mirage]

Hmm. I'm not even 100% sure that you can run Windows off of an external hard drive. I guess I could see how it might work, but, I've never had to do anything like this. If anything it would be painfully slow. Slow enough that it's hardly worth even attempting.

Why not just get a new hard drive completely for your PC?

 

[peong]

Hi Andrew, thanks for you reply. It's confirmed that my 3.5" HDD is perfectly ok, so I want to use back the existing softwares in this HDD. My laptop does support booting from USB HDD, so, run windows from external drive is possible. The only issue is that I didn't re-format and install windows to the USB HDD thru my laptop, it's an instant copy from my desktop. Can this cause to my problem?
------
Can anyone help me???:shake: