I have downloaded Windows 7 and burnt the image to dvd, is it possible to install it on an extenal hard drive and run from there instead of installing on my one hard drive in my mini Dell laptop as it only has 16 gig hard drive and I don't want to wipe off XP. Keech56

Depending on the specification of your laptop, you should be able to install the Windows 7 beta through Microsoft Virtual PC. You can configureMicrosoft Virtual PC to use your USB drive to store the virtual hard drive that will hold the Windows 7 beta. I haven't tried this yet but it did work with Vista. Simon

Are you trying to install and boot from the external HDD? If so, it will depend on the computer whether or not you can boot from the drive. I know that the Windows installer will see it (it saw my MyBook), but I never tried to install to it. My advice to you is try it and see what happens. Keep in mind that your performance will be pretty awful USB drives are generally the quickest.

I have a Seagate 150 gig external hard drive that I would use, I have thought of getting a 16 gig flash drive though if that would be a better option to load Windows 7 on.My computer is a Dell Mini 9 with a solid state hard drive of 16 gig with XP pre-loaded, with resource discs provided if I need to repair or re-install XP. I would like to try 7 but don't fancy the idea of wiping out XP. in the biosthere are options for usb boot up or fromcd/dvd altough the laptop does not have a built in dvd/cd player/burner, I use an external one. It has a gig of memory installed and a 1.60 ghzIntel Atom processor. Keech56

If you boot off the 7 install disk, you will be prompted to choose the installation disk before you will be required to reformat the interal disk. If the USB HDD is not suitable, the installer will inform you at that point. As long as you don't tell it to reformat yourinternal disk you should have not problems.