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How To

How to: Install Windows 7 on an eeePC 1000H

Tom Clarke

Tom Clarke

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This morning, I installed and set up Windows 7 on my ASUS 1000H netbook. It wasn’t exactly difficult to do, but given that gathered a few strands of information from a few different sources, I thought I’d share the whole process with my fellow 1000H users, and anyone else who might be interested in the latest version of Windows.

windows-7-1000h-2.png

I’ll start off with a list of the downloads you’ll need to get everything up and running, but you can also download a special ZIP file I’ve made for this post, which also includes installers for Firefox, Adobe Flash, AVG and various other utilities I consider to be essential in a fresh install.

What you will need

  • Asus eeePC 1000H (mine has RAM upgraded to 2GB)
  • Windows 7 Beta disk (get this from Microsoft here)
  • USB DVD drive (installing from a flash drive may be possible)
  • Fixed ACPI drivers (download here)
  • Ralink wifi driver for Vista (download here)
  • Intel graphics driver for Vista (download here)
  • ASUS SuperHybridEngine (download here)
  • Or just download this ZIP file which includes all of the above drivers, as well as various other handy utilities

Step one – preparing the 1000H for Windows 7

I had two partitions on my 1000H: one for Windows XP Home (default OEM install) and one for Mac OS 10.5.5. Installing Windows 7 will overwrite your Windows XP partition, but it won’t affect your OS X installation… much (more on that later). As with any OS installation, the first thing I did on my 1000H was back up any photos, documents etc, on either my Windows or OS X partitions, just in case.

Once you’re sure that you’re ready to go, connect your DVD drive via USB and restart your 1000H. It’s impossible to upgrade directly from Windows XP at the moment, though this will probably change with the retail version of Windows 7.

Step two – installing from the Windows 7 DVD

Once you restart your 1000H, make hit F2 to enter your BIOS settings and ensure that you have the CD/DVD drive selected as your preferred boot device, then boot into the DVD. When you see the welcome window, select your locale and keyboard preferences (interestingly, these settings didn’t stick for me: I had to configure the Spanish keyboard on my 1000H once Windows 7 was up and running). Next, hit Install now and you’re required to accept the terms and conditions of the Beta.

Next up, you’re asked if you want to upgrade or perform a custom (brand new) installation. At this point, you can select Upgrade, even if you had XP Home installed before. The installer should spot your existing installation after a few seconds and will display the standard warning that your old files and apps will be moved to a Windows.0 folder. Personally, I usually back up the things I need and delete this folder as it often takes up a lot of space on the HDD.

Now just let the installer run. When I did it, the whole installation only took about 20 minutes. Don’t forget to keep your Windows 7 product key handy in order to complete the install.

Step three – updating the drivers & installing utilities

windows-7-1000h-1.png

Once Windows 7 is up and running, you’ll need to install the ACPI,  wireless and graphics drivers. Set the Intel graphics driver to use Vista compatibility mode or otherwise it won’t run properly. You may need to restart your 1000H a couple of times during this step.

The ASUS SuperHybridEngine works fine in Windows 7, as do the ASUS hotkeys controlling volume, brightness and so on. Once everything was set up, I tested the Windows Experience Index and got a score of 2.3, which really isn’t that bad for a lightweight notebook.

Final observations

In all, Windows 7 runs very well on my 1000H, and the user interface and response times seem better than on XP. Boot takes 32 seconds, which is a good 17 seconds faster than Mac OS 10.5.5 on the same machine. Windows 7 doesn’t feel too buggy, so far, so it’s great to see that Microsoft have finally come up with a decent successor to XP. It’s definitely a recommended upgrade.

The Windows 7 bootloader did remove (or at least hide) the option to boot into OS X. To fix this, I simply ran NeoSmart EasyBCD to force it to display OS X as an option. The first time I did this, I broke the Windows bootloader too, but this was easily fixed by booting with the Windows 7 install DVD and fixing the installation.

[With thanks to: EeeUser forum]

Tom Clarke

Tom Clarke

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