Archive for June, 2009
I saw a few incomplete guides out there, including the one that I used to install Windows 7 on my eee PC 1000. I figured this would be a good time to make a guide specifically for you in the same situation as I was. This guide will tell you how to acquire Windows 7, prepare a flash drive to install Windows 7, and to acquire the neccessary drivers after installation is finished.
Step 1. Acquire Windows 7.
Your Free for One Year Windows 7 Key and Release Client DVD-ISO can be downloaded from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx
The N270 ATOM processor does not support x86_64 (amd64) extensions, so you’re going to want to grab the 32bit version.
Step 2. Prepare your Flash Drive.
I would recommend a 4GB drive, as the Windows DVD ISO is 2.35GB
First we’re going to open up diskpart to prepare the Flash Disk.
- Open command prompt. (Start > Run > cmd)
- At command prompt open diskpart (type diskpart then press enter)
- Next run the “list disk” command to get a view of the available devices connected to the machine.
- Now run select disk # where # is the number associated with your flash drive.
- Type “clean” to wipe the partition table
- Now type “create partition primary”, which will create a new partition
- Then type “active”, this will mark the partition bootable
- Next we will format the drive with the command “FORMAT fs=ntfs” you could also use FAT32 but I prefer NTFS. You can also add “quick” after NTFS to perform a quick format.
- Finally type “assign” to have windows assign the drive a mount point.
- Type “quit” to leave bootpart.
- You should now be back at command prompt.
- We now need to insert or mount the Windows 7 drive. Either burn the image to a disk or use a ISO mounting tool to mount the disk image. Once you have the image loaded in one way or another we’re going to run a file on the disk.
- Type the drive letter of the drive i.e. “i:” or “d:”
- Then type “cd boot”
- Bow run “bootsect /nt60 driveletterhere” wheras driveletterhere is the drive letter of your flash drive.
- Now your flash drive is prepared for the Windows 7 files. Copy the entire contents of the Windows 7 disk to the flash drive.
Step 3: Install Windows 7
The installation is actually remarkably straight forward. A lot of guides will tell you you have to run compact on the drive. Fortunately, most eee PC users have a 8GB OS drive and another drive for files. The end installation will leave you with around 1GB of free space on the OS SSD. So running compact is not neccesary if you do not want to.
- Make sure all of your files are backed up
- Reboot the eee PC
- Insert the Flash Drive
- While the POST screen is showing tap the ESC key
- From the boot menu select your USB Flash Drive
- Windows 7 installation should now start as normal.
- You should format the 8GB OS SSD during the installation, this way it does not install Windows 7 and leave your existing files alone. On the eee PCs with hard drives that may be fine but on the standard eee PC that would result in barely any free space.
Step 4: Drivers and Optimisation
Drivers
Windows 7 actually detects more hardware directly after install than Windows XP does. All of the hardware detects normally except the ASUS ACPI driver. It will detect in Device Manager as an “Unknown Device”. The Device ID is ACPI\ASUS010. This device also controls the eee PC specific hotkeys. For example the ability to turn off the Bluetooth and WiFi radios from within windows.
The ACPI Drivers and other Drivers are available on the ASUS Support website. Select your eee PC from the list, then download the ACPI drivers from underneath the “ATK” category.
You’ll get occasional popups saying that certain keys have been disabled from the utility. You can End the Process to end these messages, but you’ll also loose access to some function keys.
I’ve so far been able to get the the ACPI utility to stop complaining about the Intel Utility. I did this by downloading the Windows Vista 32bit Driver from the Intel Website. It’s the Intel 945GM Chipset that the eee PC 1000 uses. You’ll have to use the “Have Disk” method of overriding Windows 7. Since technically the Win7 driver is newer you’ll have to insist on using the older Windows Vista driver. Once the driver installs, for me I got a blank screen and I had to hard reboot. Once the computer rebooted I got one less annoying error from the ACPI utility. I believe you could use a similar process with the other drivers to satify the ASUS utility. I’ll update as I learn more.
Optimisation
I recommend you enable the “Windows Classic” theme, and go through the Windows Services panel to disable whatever Services you may not need.
I also recommend you right click on the Taskbar and use the properties section to shrink the toolbar. Although it might be perfect for a modern Hi-Res screen the New Windows 7 toolbar is a bit big for an eee PC.
Step 5: Update your Firmware on your eee PC 1000 (Optional)
Download the “ASUS Update Utility” under the Utilities Section on the ASUS Website. Extract it and install it. Use the MSI installer instead of the EXE, because the EXE will give you an error message about the version of windows not being correct. Once installed the ASUS Update Utility will download and install the latest Firmware version for your eeePC BIOS.
This problem had me going nuts for about 30 minutes. Typically when an update comes out, I just edit all of my configuration files by changing the subversion up by one number. This time around I was having problems with the phones unable to find the firmware on the TFTP Server. My aha moment came when I ran the following commands:
root@pbx:/tftpboot $ ls *08-11*
P003-08-11-00.bin P003-08-11-00.sbn P0S3-08-11-00.loads P0S3-08-11-00.sb2
root@pbx:/tftpboot $ ls *08-12*
ls: *08-12*: No such file or directory
Cisco has changed the syntax ever so slightly from 08-* to 8-*. Hope that helps someone!
Two of my good friends from UCF have recently wrote a wonderful new App for iPhone. Brandyn White and Andrew Miller of Dappervision, Inc. have put together a really neat app called Mosaica. The app allows you to take a number of pictures, and the iPhone will take them and fuse them together to form a large Mosaic of the smaller pictures. Although image stitching technology is nothing new I have to say the way it’s handled on the iPhone with Mosaica is absolutely ingenious. It’s really intuitive, remarkably fast, and really fun. I find myself making Mosaics to compensate for the rather low-resolution of the iPhone Camera. They have a few videos posted up on the website, as well as community site to allow you to share Mosaics. I would have to say one of the neatest things is that the app allows you to take close-ups of things within a Mosaic. For example, take a broad photo of your room, then take a close up of your monitor. Mosaica will then recognise the monitor close-up as part of the larger mosaic and show that image when you zoom in on the monitor. Genius!
Check them out at m.osaica.com
edit: PowerEdge T105 is now on HCL.
How to Run VMWare ESXi 4.0 on PowerEdge T105, you ask? Simple Answer. Flash Drive. The process goes thusly.
- Get your ESXi Image ready to go. You can download it from the VMWare website.
- Get your trusty 1GB+ Empty Flash Drive and stick it into one of the USB Ports on the Server
- Next, Burn the ISO to a disk and stick it in your drive.
- Press F11 at the BIOS to select your Boot device.
- Boot from the DVD-ROM Drive.
- When prompted where to install VMWare ESXi choose the Flash Drive that should show up in the list.
- When prompted to reboot, remove the installation media. On reboot enter the BIOS.
- Switch the Hard Drive Boot Priority to put the USB drive to the top.
- Boot VMWare ESXi as normal.
Voilà! You’re ready to rock. The PowerEdge T105 is not on the HCL so you’re unfortunately unable to run it natively because of the onboard SATA controller. You could also find a compatible SATA controller and put the drives on that, but realistically the USB Drive is not that big of a hassel for most small environments. It also means you can boot VMWare even in the event of a HDD Failure. I’ve heard that many people will actually put the flash drive inside the case that so it is not at risk of being knocked around.
