My Medion laptop double boots Vista and WinXP. I would like to include Windows7 but don't want to sacrifice any more harddisk space. Thought I might try an external harddrive into the USB port and install windows there but the USB drive doesn't show up during the installation procedure. Next I installed windows on the external drive on a desktop computer (as an internal) then removed the drive and plugged it into the laptop, booting from USB. The process started but soon the laptop restarted ans so on and on. Presumably the motherboard drivers from the PC didn't suit, can anybody think of a way to achieve what I want to do?

to boot up on the usb drive.

check first if your lappy ca support usb booting. Plug in first the external hdd then turn on the pc. Go to the bios check if there's an option for you to boot from usb hdd.

if it does then reboot (and boot from your win7 dvd) and do the installation.

Multi booting

Hi,

I believe that you are unable to boot Windows from a USB drive because Windows resets the USB ports during it's boot process.

It has nothing to do with motherboard drivers or even the type of laptop or desktop that you are using.