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I'm attempting to copy my existing installation of Windows 7 from my work laptop to an SSD of my own, and boot from it from an external enclosure via USB 3.0. I've used the laptop's internal SATA ports to do the actual migration, and the new drive works fine when used as the sole internal drive. But when I try to put it into the enclosure and boot from there, I get a bluescreen during the boot animation (0x0000007b).

I believe the problem comes down to Windows not knowing about USB 3 before it's fully loaded. Evidence: I can boot from an install medium, and the enclosure isn't visible till I explicitly load my laptop's USB 3 drivers.

So: How can I get those drivers to load as part of Windows' boot sequence early enough for this to work?

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  • I also have Windows 7 on an external drive that was previously internal. It bluescreens on the boot animation as well. Did you find a solution?
    – Andreas
    Commented Oct 8, 2016 at 20:43
  • @Sirap, nope, sure didn't
    – Atario
    Commented Oct 10, 2016 at 12:06

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It's not a problem with lack of USB 3.0 drivers. With the exception of Win8 Enterprise's Windows To Go feature, Windows does not allow installation to or booting from USB drives without jumping through hoops. Unsupported methods using WAIK, ImageX, Sysprep etc. do exist for fresh installs, but I don't know of any way to get an existing Win7 install to boot from USB.

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  • I'm willing to jump through hoops. Surely it's just a question of getting certain files arranged as though they had been through whatever process one goes through to do the fresh install?
    – Atario
    Commented Apr 12, 2013 at 23:23

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