Vista - Vista won't boot from USB Hard Drive!

For backup purposes, I successfully am able to clone my entire Vista Home
Premium hard drive to an IDE drive. Granted I had to insert my Vista DVD
and choose the repair option to get it to boot.

MY PROBLEM: If I enclose the IDE hard drive into an external USB case, my
motherboard and bios support a USB boot just fine, thank you, AND Vista
STARTS to boot. HOWEVER Vista FAILS and causes the computer to restart. If
I then try to repair the disk using the Vista DVD the repair fails.
However, if I then take the same IDE drive and plop it back into my computer
as an ordinary IDE drive, it boots up and runs just fine.

Now, I will reiterate that my Motherboard and Bios handle USB boot
capability just fine, thank you. In addition the drive IS being assigned
the correct drive letter of C:. I know this because the Vista repair
utility recognizes the drive as drive C.

CONCLUSION: until proven otherwise it would seem that Microsoft is
**intentionally preventing me** from booting and running Vista from a USB
hard drive. Reason I believe this to be true, is that Windows ME can boot
and run just fine from a USB hard drive, even ME was installed onto an IDE
and then enclosed into a USB case. So that proves that Microsoft is
perfectly capable of designing an OS that boots from USB, and which would
allow an IDE drive to be enclosed into a USB case boot up.

It seems clear to me that Microsoft intentionally removed that ability for
XP and continues to disallow this for Vista. Thanks to Microsoft's policy
of not letting consumers boot from USB, I am stuck using IDE and SATA mobile
racks rather than being able to put all My SATA and IDE backup drives into
USB cases.

Is there ANY way to get Vista to boot and run from USB hard drive? If I
were to reinstall the whole damn thing from scratch (a time consuming
endeavor) would it let me install onto USB HD and would THAT USB HD boot up
and run, or would I just be wasting yet another afternoon trying to get this
happening?

J.

There have been a number of postings from knowledgeable sources that Vista
will not boot from a USB drive. Take it for what it cost you.

"jay-n-123" <nospamever@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:7aJIh.283$Bi2.34@trnddc01...
> For backup purposes, I successfully am able to clone my entire Vista Home
> Premium hard drive to an IDE drive. Granted I had to insert my Vista DVD
> and choose the repair option to get it to boot.
>
> MY PROBLEM: If I enclose the IDE hard drive into an external USB case, my
> motherboard and bios support a USB boot just fine, thank you, AND Vista
> STARTS to boot. HOWEVER Vista FAILS and causes the computer to restart.
> If I then try to repair the disk using the Vista DVD the repair fails.
> However, if I then take the same IDE drive and plop it back into my
> computer as an ordinary IDE drive, it boots up and runs just fine.
>
> Now, I will reiterate that my Motherboard and Bios handle USB boot
> capability just fine, thank you. In addition the drive IS being assigned
> the correct drive letter of C:. I know this because the Vista repair
> utility recognizes the drive as drive C.
>
> CONCLUSION: until proven otherwise it would seem that Microsoft is
> **intentionally preventing me** from booting and running Vista from a USB
> hard drive. Reason I believe this to be true, is that Windows ME can boot
> and run just fine from a USB hard drive, even ME was installed onto an IDE
> and then enclosed into a USB case. So that proves that Microsoft is
> perfectly capable of designing an OS that boots from USB, and which would
> allow an IDE drive to be enclosed into a USB case boot up.
>
> It seems clear to me that Microsoft intentionally removed that ability for
> XP and continues to disallow this for Vista. Thanks to Microsoft's policy
> of not letting consumers boot from USB, I am stuck using IDE and SATA
> mobile racks rather than being able to put all My SATA and IDE backup
> drives into USB cases.
>
> Is there ANY way to get Vista to boot and run from USB hard drive? If I
> were to reinstall the whole damn thing from scratch (a time consuming
> endeavor) would it let me install onto USB HD and would THAT USB HD boot
> up and run, or would I just be wasting yet another afternoon trying to get
> this happening?
>
> J.
>

Neither Windows XP or Vista can boot from an external USB drive. It is by
design me thinks.

If I was a company marketing something where I wanted it to be one per
computer, that is what I would do also. Booting from a USB drive allows one
per many computers and would cut into my profit.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User


"jay-n-123" <nospamever@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:7aJIh.283$Bi2.34@trnddc01...
> For backup purposes, I successfully am able to clone my entire Vista Home
> Premium hard drive to an IDE drive. Granted I had to insert my Vista DVD
> and choose the repair option to get it to boot.
>
> MY PROBLEM: If I enclose the IDE hard drive into an external USB case, my
> motherboard and bios support a USB boot just fine, thank you, AND Vista
> STARTS to boot. HOWEVER Vista FAILS and causes the computer to restart.
> If I then try to repair the disk using the Vista DVD the repair fails.
> However, if I then take the same IDE drive and plop it back into my
> computer as an ordinary IDE drive, it boots up and runs just fine.
>
> Now, I will reiterate that my Motherboard and Bios handle USB boot
> capability just fine, thank you. In addition the drive IS being assigned
> the correct drive letter of C:. I know this because the Vista repair
> utility recognizes the drive as drive C.
>
> CONCLUSION: until proven otherwise it would seem that Microsoft is
> **intentionally preventing me** from booting and running Vista from a USB
> hard drive. Reason I believe this to be true, is that Windows ME can boot
> and run just fine from a USB hard drive, even ME was installed onto an IDE
> and then enclosed into a USB case. So that proves that Microsoft is
> perfectly capable of designing an OS that boots from USB, and which would
> allow an IDE drive to be enclosed into a USB case boot up.
>
> It seems clear to me that Microsoft intentionally removed that ability for
> XP and continues to disallow this for Vista. Thanks to Microsoft's policy
> of not letting consumers boot from USB, I am stuck using IDE and SATA
> mobile racks rather than being able to put all My SATA and IDE backup
> drives into USB cases.
>
> Is there ANY way to get Vista to boot and run from USB hard drive? If I
> were to reinstall the whole damn thing from scratch (a time consuming
> endeavor) would it let me install onto USB HD and would THAT USB HD boot
> up and run, or would I just be wasting yet another afternoon trying to get
> this happening?
>
> J.
>

<<Neither Windows XP or Vista can boot from an external USB drive. It is by
design me thinks.>>

Yes, it is likely no coincidence that the inability to boot from USB
happened when copy protection was introduced into windows. Booting from
USB worked with WinME.

<<If I was a company marketing something where I wanted it to be one per
computer, that is what I would do also. Booting from a USB drive allows one
per many computers and would cut into my profit.>>

Booting from USB would only allow somebody to run Vista on another computer
if the copy protection algorithm didn't examine other hardware components.

J.

Now that there is eSATA for external drives, I wonder if Windows will
boot from one of those, not knowing the difference between SATA and
eSATA, since the difference so far as I know is in the cable connector
and shielding.

"Hugh Wyn Griffith" <huwyngr@unspam.tampabay.rr.com> wrote in message
news:VA.000001c5.00da3719@unspam.tampabay.rr.com...
> Now that there is eSATA for external drives, I wonder if Windows will
> boot from one of those, not knowing the difference between SATA and
> eSATA, since the difference so far as I know is in the cable connector
> and shielding.
>
What I want to know is how will vista's backup handle an external sata?
Will it force me to back it up along with my 2 ide drives like it does now.
How will it know that it is 'external' if it is plugged into a sata channel?

I installed Vista Business about a week ago.
The indexing service will not keep running.
It says "The Windows Search service terminated with the following error:
The system cannot find the path specified."

but does not say what file it is looking for.
The path to the file is set up (I can see it in regedit), but the directory
is empty.
Anyone had this problem?

In article <F59A04E3-B345-495B-8FEC-6F1425E578FE@microsoft.com>, Bill
Hamilton wrote:

> What I want to know is how will vista's backup handle an external sata?

That's what we all would like to know.. I don't have one.

"jay-n-123" <nospamever@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:EYKIh.778$I56.570@trnddc06...
> <<Neither Windows XP or Vista can boot from an external USB drive. It
> is by
> design me thinks.>>
>
> Yes, it is likely no coincidence that the inability to boot from USB
> happened when copy protection was introduced into windows. Booting
> from USB worked with WinME.

No coincidence, and has nothing to do with Windows copy protection. It
has more to do with how NT-based versions of Windows handle the USB
driver stack. The problem began with Windows 2000 (the first of the
NT-based Windows versions with built-in USB support), which didn't have
the copy protection / activation stuff that was introduced with XP.

> <<If I was a company marketing something where I wanted it to be one
> per
> computer, that is what I would do also. Booting from a USB drive
> allows one
> per many computers and would cut into my profit.>>
>
> Booting from USB would only allow somebody to run Vista on another
> computer if the copy protection algorithm didn't examine other
> hardware components.

It wouldn't likely work well anyway unless the hardware was the same (or
similar enough that the hardware drivers were OK with it). It might be
possible to craft a system that would work across a variety of hardware
platforms, but then as you said the Windows validation wouldn't allow
it.

Regards,

Dave