Asus 4g Surf Netbook + Windows XP

Kantes

Hi,

I've had an Asus 4g Surf Netbook lying around for a while and recently decided to put Windows XP on it. It wouldn't be used for much just for a singe program which will only run on XP or later. Wasn't sure if the netbook could even handle XP but after some googling people have managed to put it on no problem.

So I connected up an external DVD-RW and went through the initial XP install. Everything worked fine, formatted the drives to NTSF (except for 2 partitions of 15mb which stayed at FAT32 and had bios information on it?) and XP copied the files no problem.

However, as soon as the computer went to restart and go into the next XP install screen, all I get is NTLDR missing, press any key to restart. I though perhaps my XP disc was damaged and some files didn't copy properly but after trying some different ones I was getting the same result.

Has anyone any idea why this could be happening? I haven't tried FIXBOOT or FIXMBR but considering it's only in the install phase I didn't think it could even be a problem just yet.

A few people installed using USB drives which I haven't actually tried yet but I didn't think it'd make a difference whether it's through the DVD drive or USB drive, maybe I'm wrong?

Torqay

Kantes wrote: »

Has anyone any idea why this could be happening?

Yes, you will have to delete ALL partitions and then create a new one if you want to install XP instead of Linux on a 701 or 4G Surf

Kantes

Ah excellent, I was a bit cautious about doing so as I haven't really worked with netbooks much and didn't want to delete any partitions I may need for bios info etc though I had a feeling it was causing it to act up.

Your help is much appreciated! I'll set it off on another install now and hopefully not have to post any more problems!

Torqay

No it won't act up and yes, it can handle XP extremely well.

ASUS Support offers XP drivers for both the 701 4G Linux and the 4G surf, which are pretty much identical.

Install the ACPI driver first and then the rest.

Although a 900 MHz CPU it is throttled at 630 MHz, if you need more steam, find a little program called EeeCtl, it will crank up the old Celery M up to 1 GHz and beyond but 990 MHz is considered stable and keeps the temperature well within the thermal specs of the processor. (Note: use at your peril.) At this speed it easily outperforms a 2.0 GHz Northwood Pentium 4 and thanks to its speedy SLC-type SSD it will put even the latest and greatest laptop with a platter HDD to shame in a boot race, ~20 seconds if properly tweaked.

EeeCtl also offers manual fan control and Ultrabright LCD backlight. If you want to save power, you can also throttle the CPU speed to as low as 430 MHz (IIRC), you'll find plenty EeeCtl configuration files (.ini) for various scenarios, or edit it to you needs.

If you upgraded the memory from stock 512 MB to 1 or 2 GB, you can disable paging. Even Windows 7 (if you strip the hell out of it) is possible with 1 or 2 GB RAM on the 701 4G.

Torqay

Here is a link to a set of streamlined XP drivers for the Eee PC 4G.

Stripped of all the bloat, to be installed manually through the device manager, I believe you'll still need the ACPI driver from ASUS though, but the rest all works.