Hi guys I'm thinking of installing my legit copy of Vista Ultimate from my old computer (supplied software) to my portable HDD because I don't want to mess up the bootloader on my laptop I'm using (on GRUB after installing XP, 7 and followed by Ubuntu). Furthermore I just wanna test it out and see how it works on different computer and I don't need to hassle myself over installation on other computers if I wanna move it around.

Anyone has any ideas or methods or suggestions on how I can do this? I do know that Vista doesn't allow installation on removable media. Thanks if you can help.

best solution to the problems with Vista is to snap the disk in half and put it in the bin

Quote from Luke.S :

best solution to the problems with Vista is to snap the disk in half and put it in the bin

best thing to do with vista is use it to upgrade to 7

this seems to say it's only a matter of popping in the cd, running a command and waiting... but i can't say i've ever tried it.

My question is why but ............

1: Check in your bios to see if you can boot from usb

2: If your pc can manage esata then get a housing and a drive and you should be able to install from there.

3: This is my solution.
Get a spare hd ( I have 6 80g drives for this ), plug it in and do your install. To swap between OS's then swap in/out drives.

It's a bit of work but allows dedicated disks and os's with no chance of corruption.

Quote from bunder9999 :

this seems to say it's only a matter of popping in the cd, running a command and waiting... but i can't say i've ever tried it.

This is a good idea. I might try it after reading through it thoroughly and making sure what could go wrong. Thanks!

Quote from Racer X NZ :

My question is why but ............



1: Check in your bios to see if you can boot from usb



2: If your pc can manage esata then get a housing and a drive and you should be able to install from there.



3: This is my solution.

Get a spare hd ( I have 6 80g drives for this ), plug it in and do your install. To swap between OS's then swap in/out drives.



It's a bit of work but allows dedicated disks and os's with no chance of corruption.

1. YEP. Yes it can. I've installed Ubuntu through my USB stick.

2. Unfortunately no.

3. Is it those 2.5-inch INTERNAL HDDs? I haven't studied the internal parts of my laptop yet so I'm not confident enough to open it up to swap. That's why I wanna know if there's anyway to install it on a removable portable HDD.



I have thought through this idea as well and my friend is doing it and showing me how it works next week. Thanks anyway.

I'd missed the laptop part but it will still work, if you remove the drive from your laptop, 1 or 2 small phillips screws unless it's something bizzare, ( google is your friend ) check on it's connections and buy something like it.

If your laptops good enough then why not look at VMWare or similar and run Vista virtually. The kindest thing to do with Vista anyway.

I got the same Vista copy installed on my laptop on VirtualBox but the reason I wanted to try it is because VBox doesn't have Aero support and I wanna see how Aero looks like on my actual computer.

Quote from hiroshima guy :

I got the same Vista copy installed on my laptop on VirtualBox but the reason I wanted to try it is because VBox doesn't have Aero support and I wanna see how Aero looks like on my actual computer.

Windows Aero requires DX9 capable 3D acceleration hardware AFAIK, so installing Guest additions in VBox should give you the Aero, but I haven't tested that myself...

Quote from MadCatX :

Windows Aero requires DX9 capable 3D acceleration hardware AFAIK, so installing Guest additions in VBox should give you the Aero, but I haven't tested that myself...

I installed Guest Additions in VBox but doesn't seem to work.

Aero requires WDDM-1.0 drivers in Vista, WDDM-1.1 in Windows 7. VirtualBox will get these in version 4.1 which comes out in a month or two, SVN versions already have experimental WDDM support.

Meanwhile you can use VMware Workstation (version 7 or newer), it already supports Aero (but it'll be very slow unless your CPU has hardware MMU virtualization (Intel EPT/AMD RVI).

Quote from E.Reiljans :

Aero requires WDDM-1.0 drivers in Vista, WDDM-1.1 in Windows 7. VirtualBox will get these in version 4.1 which comes out in a month or two, SVN versions already have experimental WDDM support.

Meanwhile you can use VMware Workstation (version 7 or newer), it already supports Aero (but it'll be very slow unless your CPU has hardware MMU virtualization (Intel EPT/AMD RVI).

Oh well I guess I have to wait for a couple while. I think my processor supports virtualization so it's not a problem. I have Intel VT-x option on my VBox machine for Vista ticked and it's working sweetly with no problems.

Quote from hiroshima guy :

Oh well I guess I have to wait for a couple while. I think my processor supports virtualization so it's not a problem. I have Intel VT-x option on my VBox machine for Vista ticked and it's working sweetly with no problems.

Err.. can you enable Nested Paging in VM settings -> System -> Acceleration?

Yeah I did. I enabled all accelerations wherever possible.