Posts Tagged ‘eee PC 1000’

Complete Guide to Install Windows 7 on the eee PC 1000 series (Drivers, ACPI and All)

Tuesday, June 16th, 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.

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How to Tether an eee PC to an iPhone

Saturday, January 17th, 2009

Before I begin let me give you a disclaimer:

TETHERING YOUR IPHONE TO A COMPUTER IS AGAINST THE ATT TERMS OF SERVICE

DO NOT DO IT

JAILBREAKING YOUR IPHONE WILL END YOUR IPHONE’S WARRANTY

DO NOT DO IT

Before we get started let me explain some of the risks. Jail-breaking your iPhone can be dangerous, and it voids your warranty. Although I have never personally seen anyone ever brick their phone during Jail-breaking, it has happened. Balance the positives and negatives. Furthermore, using your iPhone as a modem is against your terms of service. In the past ATT has contacted users who have been discovered to have used their iPhone as a modem. Be careful. The “unlimited data plan”, in actually has a 5GB/month limit before ATT will call you to “reassess your needs”. If you do tether your iPhone to your eee PC or other laptop. Be prudent about usage, don’t abuse it, and if you do need a full time mobile modem, tethering is not a replacement, get an AirCard from ATT or Verizon.

With that said. Let’s get to the guide. The process is really quite easy.It essentially involves two steps, 1. Jail-breaking the iPhone and 2. installing the correct software. With that said, let’s get to step one.

Jail-breaking the iPhone:

There are already way too many much better guides on jail-breaking the iPhone out there. So I’m going to be quick and just provide you with the resources you need. You are going to need two things, QuickPwn and a copy of a clean iPhone firmware.

Between the two of these it will allow you to Jailbreak your iPhone in place without losing your settings, and will give you access to Installer.app and Cydia

Installing PdaNET:

Once you have Cydia on your iPhone springboard, use it to install PdaNET on your iPhone, and the PdaNET Desktop on your laptop. Furthermore, make sure you have iTunes installed on your eee PC.

Once you have both installed go ahead and restart the iPhone by holding down the power button and sliding it off. This can help with some issues.

Now go ahead and plug the iPhone USB cable into the phone and the laptop, open PdaNET on the iPhone and set it to USB Mode. On the Desktop, right click on the tray icon and click connect. Voilà, PdaNET will establish a PPP connection to the iPhone and you’re browsing the 3G network! You can also use WiFi using PdaNET, but I’ve found tethering to be much more reliable, and much easier on both eee PC and iPhone batteries.

I’ve found an interesting way to save on bandwidth and help with speed is to set my Firefox User Agent String to mimic an iPhone. The user agent is how websites know what kind of browser you are using. If you set Firefox to pretend to be an iPhone you will receive web-pages in the iPhone format. Very useful when trying to mitigate bandwidth usage. Here is a guide on how to do it.

Also I recommend that you find WAP versions of your favourite sites. These are websites that have specially formatted mobile versions. Although the 3G connection is plenty fast for most browsing I like to veer on the safe side.

Best of luck!

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eee PC 1000 Product Review and Windows XP Installation Guide

Friday, January 16th, 2009

I recently bought an eee PC 1000 the other day. So far I have to say I’m absolutely in love with it.  It’s a fantastic product.

Firstly I’d like to thank the eeeuser.com community for providing a wonderful place to share information. If it wasn’t for this wonderful resource I probably never would have managed to get my eee PC is a position where I’m very happy with it.

I purchased the Linux version which comes with a propreitary version of Xandros Linux on it. As much as I am a huge Linux fan I have to say I was a little disappointed. Although I would later find out that you could indeed get shell access to the Xandros Installation. After 5 hours of playing with the limited “Easy Mode”, I decided it was time to put eeeXubuntu on it. Turns out, support for the eee PC 1000’s hardware has not yet become available for eeeXubuntu. Meaning that out of the box I wasn’t able to access either the WiFi adapter or the Ethernet adapter. Rather than dealing with recompiling the kernel and modules for the adapters I realised that I was probably going to have to put Windows on it. As much as I may love Linux, I realise that Network Connectivity is more important.

I also found this SD Card on Newegg.com, it’s only 26$ shipped, and it’s 16GB. Obviously I’m not the first person who has thought of using an SD card to hot-swap Operating Systems as it actually has “Eee PC” in the product name. I’ve had it for a few days now and I love it. It’s a great way to experiment with alternative Operating Systems on the Eee without having to worry about overwriting your carefully configured Linux or Windows installation.

Installing Windows XP was a bitter harder than I hoped, but not terribly so. I’m obviously not the first person whose been through this and I was able to find able documentation on how to install WinXP on my eee. The easiest way to do it by far is to get a External USB enclosure and install straight from the WinXP CD. For those of who don’t have an external enclosure, or whose enclosure has burned up…. like me. You’ll have to copy Windows XP onto a USB Flash drive.  There are a number of guides out there that essentially use the same process, here is one. They walk you through the process of preparing your installation, and installing WinXP. Be certain to follow the instructions very closely, the process is very picky, ready carefully, don’t assume.

When all was said and done I had to go back and edit my NTLDR file. The flashdrive took the first drive position. Which is peculiar for installation media. I had to change Windows’ Position from:

multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Professional” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
to:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Professional” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

That fixed the problem.

It wasn’t a big deal, but it was a pain, because now my Windows installation Drive Letter is D:. It may not be the end of the world, but it is annoying. I’ve read that one can change the System Drive letter, but having tried in the past I know it can end in misery. I’ll deal with it for now. One of the first things I did was change the Temporary Files folder. This helps because although the read speed from the internal SSD drive is very high, the write speed at times seems deplorable. I’ve found that if I spread my writes across the drives it helps a lot.

Installing drivers was relatively painless, all of the windows drivers are available from ASUS Support. Make sure you install the ACPI driver first. Typically I don’t install a lot of these drivers because I assume they are just going to install some bloated branded software. THIS IS NOT THE CASE. The ACPI driver gives you the ability to turn on/off hardware to save your battery power. It’s a necessity on the eee PC as it has no dedicated WiFi on/off switch.

Once all the software is installed, I went ahead and did my usual customisations to reduce bloat. Disabling various themes, start-up programmes and customising applications to best take advantage of the tiny screen. All and all the eee PC way outperformed my expectations. It runs exceptionally well for it’s size and speed and the battery life is phenomonal. The price point of 399$ is unbeatable for the ultimate tiny computer.

The next step of course is tethering it to your iPhone which is coming up next.

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