Booting from a windows HDD

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Hi, I got my mac 2 months ago (LOVE IT!!) but have been thinking about using bootcamp so I can play windows games on my mac. But I don't really fancy going out and paying a £80 or so for a copy windows 7.
Before I got my mac I had a Dell laptop running windows Vista. The screen stopped working and took it to a local computer repairs shop and they said that it would be expensive to fix so just as well buy a new PC (hence how I ended up with my mac) anyway, I kept the laptop and as far as im aware - the HDD is fully functional. Is it at all possible to put the laptops HDD in an external case and then somehow selecting it to boot off of that?

I haven't got the windows install disks, so can't install windows on my mac using bootcamp... don't really know how to move forward.
Any help much appreciated.
 

chscag

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Windows, (any version) will not boot from an external drive. It's a built in copy protection of the OS by Microsoft.

Also, since your Mac is new only Windows 7 is compatible. There are no drivers for XP or Vista. If you do buy a copy of Windows make sure it's a full copy of Windows 7.
 
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Brilliant thanks. I had no idea! I guess I'll be buying windows 7 then :)
 

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