I have a Dell Inspiron 8600 with no hard drive, i was just wondering if it was possible that i could install an operating system on an external drive and have my laptop run off of that.

I think thats possible, plug her in and try it out. An external hard drive is basically just an internal hard drive, it just has a case and usually uses SATA / USB 2.0.

Just format like you would with any other hard drive. Good luck ;D

Ill give it a try but do you think its a problem that it goes through USB, will it not detect the operating system right off the bat? Thanks

if your bios allows you to boot off a usb port, perhaps.

Why not just get a hard drive? They're not expensive.