Win7 Boot question

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I replaced the HDD in my current system and installed Crunchbang Linux on it. The Old HDD still works fine, and is loaded with Win7,, it now lives in a USB case.

The question is, how do I get Win7 to boot from the USB HDD so I don't have to open my laptop up and swap drives every time I need to Run Windows?

I have updated GRUB, and Win7 registers as a boot option in GRUB. Windows will flash an error and give me the option of repairing the installation, or booting normally. I have tried booting normally, and it shows the load animation and then bluescreens.

I don't know what repairing the the installation will do, but it could possibly trash the install, and make it unbootable should I transfer back to the SATA controller in the laptop.

What will I have to do to make the Win7 HDD bootable from it's USB enclosure?

Reinstall Windows 7 on the new hard drive. It is common knowledge that All Microsoft operating systems must be on the primary drive and the primary position on the primary controller on the internal hard drive chain. Why do you think Microshaft is the 900 lbs. gorilla of the computer software market?

I would dual boot from the same drive. Reinstall Win7 and resize the Win7 partition(s?) to make room for #!. I don't know how much space you need for each OS though. You could get a larger HDD, or share a partition for your personal files between the two OS's.

But, you can choose to boot from USB in the BIOS, but I don't know if that works for Windows or not. And you probably tried that.

No, it will not work, trying to boot Win7 from the USB in BIOS. The only way that would work is if the USB drive is a optical drive or a flash drive being used for installation or recovery.

If it's a new-ish BIOS you should be able to boot from a USB hard drive just fine. There should be a key you can press at the BIOS start-up screen to select the drive to boot from. It's F12 for me, but it will usually tell you on the screen or in the manual. Alternatively, you can choose the boot drive order in the BIOS, but note that "USB HDD" may not appear there unless a USB HDD is actually connected.

I've already done this, and what happened is detailed in my initial post. --Apparently this is undoable without actually installing onto the USB Drive itself.

I can't believe that a computer OS that is bloated and unconfigurable as MS products are continue to have such a huge market share.

Why wouldn't you install on to the USB drive itself? You can't run Win7 as a live usb/cd thing like you can with many Linuxes, and if you have a whole HDD for it, it would be pointless even with Linux... And why are you using GRUB? Install Windows on the USB HDD with its normal bootloader and then boot from it. I don't see why that would not work. Or perhaps I misunderstand you.

And the average computer user doesn't need to worry about bloat and unconfigurability. Storage is rather cheap and as long as it lets them browse the internet and play media and reasonable speeds, it's good enough. Windows built up it's market share before Linux would have been decent for the average user, and most people don't know enough to switch.

Windows is already installed on the drive. The regular bootloader crashes when it tires to boot. GRUB recognises Win7. I am not going to reinstall what is already installed. --If anything I will wipe the drive and see if I can get XP Pro to boot from the drive instead of staying with something as totally cumbersome as Win7, which is essentially little more than an even more bloated 'bugfix' for WinVista.

Why MS had to f*** up the one thing that they finally got right,(IE the Win2k/Xp series) is beyond my comprehension, which is why I hardly ever use their product anymore.

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood the original post. You didn't say what the bluescreen error was, but I'm guessing it's INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE. If so, this is because the drivers for SATA and USB HDD are different. (The same would happen if you moved it to a SCSI drive.) Repairing the installation might fix it, but I'm not sure if it will clear the registry. I haven't done a repair on Windows 7. You could take a back-up of the drive and try it out. Or google the bluescreen error you get.

Or just get a boot manager program and separate hard drives. The boot manager circumvents any OS, but you need to set it up first and then install the OS where you want it.

Wrong way to go about it. You should have shrunk the Win7 NTFS partition, leaving room for Linux. Figure out whose boot loader can start the other OS. Install Linux in the free space, then configure dual boot. Format your USB drive as exFAT and use it for data.

Seriously, dual boot will be much less work. If space is an issue,
you can keep the Windows drive as internal and boot linux from the USB drive.

If you really want to put Windows on the USB drive, normal re-install will NOT suffice. Only the embedded versions of Windows can boot from USB. I vaguely remember someone once ripped the bootable USB stack from the installation environment but last I heard it's very crash prone.

If the edition of your Windows 7 is Ultimate or Enterprise, you can copy your Windows partition to a vhd file, put the file on the USB drive, and reinstall the boot manager. (more details here)