Looking for some guidance... OS on a mobile drive.

Although I have surfed this site for a couple of years now this is my first post, so please forgive me if its not well put together.

Here is the situation:

For some time now I have been using my external hard drive to do a variety of things on my computer at work. I store games on there to play, movies, etc.
This is done mostly because I do not have admin privelages so my installs are very limited.
Currently I was moved to working nights which is extremely boring and leaves me with about 6 hours a night of time to do nothing. So I have been attempting to play World of Warcraft at work. I had played City of Villains on the computer before with no problems, but warcraft requires a direct x update which I can not provide due to no admin privelages.

Ok with all that useless background info this is what I am looking for advice regarding. If possible I would like to set up an operating system on my portable hard drive. The hard drive is a WD passport connected via USB. The comp is a newer business dell that just scrapes by for the gaming system reqs.
So what I need to figure out is what OS to install on the mobile drive and if I can even use it to boot up this computer so I can play video games.
This entire situation is because I cant come up with a good reason for our tech support to update the computers directx and i have no admin rights.

So if you have any advice on how to accomplish getting a secondary OS onto a mobile drive that would boot this computer, or any way of getting a directx update without admin privelages please let me know.

Thanks in advance,
star_scarred

 

Hmmm.....well im not sure how to get directx without admin privalges.

But im sure you can install Windows XP on the HD...try inserting the disc into the puter, boot up to the desktop, go to my computer, and click on the winxp disc and see if there is a "setup.exe" or something that will allow you to execute it and install it to a certain place on a hard drive in this case your external one. Note: i never tried this before, as i have not needed a use for it, so im just throwing out a random guess here. You also may need to do this at a home computer where you have admin.

The only way i can think of to load windows through the external harddrive at work, is through BIOS, im not sure exactly what BIOS you run at work, but mine at home i can choose what i want to boot the computer from(HDD-0 through HDD-3, Floppy, or Disc) Im not exactly sure what exactly your external HDD would be considered, maybe HDD-0 as i use HDD-1 to boot my PC.

Maybe someone else can shed some more light on the subject.