rolffrombc

Q: Boot from windows 7 hdd

Hello all,

I haven an older pc running windows 7 32bit. On the pc, windows works perfectly fine. I bought an usb 3.0 hdd enclosure, inserted the drive from the pc into the enclosure and connected it to my iMac. I restarted my mac while holding the option but the windows hdd didn't show up. In the system preferences> Startup disk the drive could be selected as startup disk. I selected it and clicked the restart button. When I rebooted the computer there was the grey apple screen and after about a minuter or so I got the black windows screen that said something like: no bootable disk. Insert boot disk and press any key.

Since windows works perfectly fine on the pc, I think the problem is with my mac. I have heard that in order for widows to start on a mac, the mac needs to simulate a BIOS which can be done by using a sudo command in terminal.

Is that correct ?

Thanks for your help!

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3), Mid 2011

Posted on Oct 8, 2016 2:58 PM

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Q: Boot from windows 7 hdd

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  • by rkaufmann87,Helpful

    rkaufmann87 rkaufmann87 Oct 8, 2016 7:01 PM in response to rolffrombc
    Level 9 (58,956 points)
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    Oct 8, 2016 7:01 PM in response to rolffrombc

    MS Windows will not operate from an external HD. That's the Microsoft way, sorry but thats the way it is. What you should do is to use Boot Camp to install Windows onto your computer so you can have both Windows and OS X on the machine.

     

    You can use Boot Camp Assistant (pre-installed on the computer already) to install it. You can get support for Boot Camp if you need it in the Boot Camp forum. Obviously you will need a Windows DVD or ISO to install Windows.