This tutorial will show you how to install Microsoft Windows 7 on the Asus Eee PC 900. Except for the last part (configuring boot devices), this tutorial works for every other netbook out there! Just follow the instructions to create your bootable Windows 7 USB thumbdrive, plug it into your netbook and start!
If the image doesn’t satisfy you, see this video proof:
(In this video, I am running Build 6956, although the startup animation is not the correct one. I guess that the graphics card is not good enough to display the 3D animation. This way of installing Windows 7 will work with any version of Windows 7)
What do I need?
- DVD or Image file of Windows 7/Windows Vista
- 4 GB USB thumbdrive (Usually NOT MORE THAN 4GB! Booting from USB flash devices is often not supported on devices bigger than 4GB, but with some newer netbook, it still works. Smaller USB sticks won’t work either since W7 won’t fit on them!)
- Computer with DVD drive or Image Mounting tool or Image Extracting tool
- Asus Eee PC (or any other netbook)
- Approx. 3h of time
Steps covered in this tutorial
- Create a bootable USB thumbdrive
- Copy Windows 7 to the thumbdrive
- Prepare the Eee PC to boot from USB
- Install Windows 7
- Install necessary drivers
- Try to get Aero running
How can I install Windows 7 on my netbook?
Create a bootable USB thumbdrive
First of all, if you haven’t got an external DVD drive, you will need a few tricks to install any Operating System on the Asus Eee PC since it has no CD drive.
But luckily the mainboard is quite cool and supports booting from USB devices, such as an USB thumbdrive. For Windows 7 Build 6956, you need at least 2.3 GB memory, so rather go for a 4 GB stick. Rumors that USB booting supports only 2 GB are not true!!
Plug the USB thumbdrive into another computer and download the following tool package:
Download USB_PREP8, PeToUSB, Bootsect.exe
Extract all the files inside and navigate to the usb_prep8 folder. Inside, double-click the executable batch file called usb_prep8.cmd. You will see a screen like this:
Press any key to contine, after a few seconds it will show you this window:
Make sure the options “Enable Disk Format”, “Quick Format” and “Enable LBA (FAT16X)” are checked and the correct USB drive is selected in the dropdown list above. This formatting process will erase all data on your USB thumbdrive! Save all files you need before formatting it! Then click start, click OK and click YES in the window asking you whether you really want to erase all files. After a few seconds, the stick should be formatted. Now close the PeToUSB window and the remaining console window.
The thumbdrive is formatted in a way that supports booting now, but the boot record is still not correct. In order to fix that, you have to use the other tool you extracted, called bootsect.
Press Start, Run and enter “cmd” (without the quotation marks), then press enter.
In the console window showing up, navigate to the path you extracted the bootsect folder to. You can use the “cd” command (change directory) and enter the name of the next folder afterwards (e.g. “cd Desktop”) to access the folder, or enter “cd ..” to move one folder back. If you enter only the first part of the folder name, e.g. “des” and then press TAB, it will auto-complete it to “Desktop”. This way you have to navigate into the bootsect folder.
Inside, enter “BootSect.exe /nt60 I:” and press enter to prepare the boot sector. Replace “I:” with the drive letter of your USB thumbdrive! The option “/nt60″ prepares the thumbdrive for use with Windows Vista and Windows 7, if you want to install XP choose “/nt52″.
After pressing enter you should see something like this:
Target volumes will be updated with BOOTMGR compatible bootcode.
I: (\\?\Volume{789ae78e-c3da-11dd-b1a9-000e2e405744})
Successfully updated FAT filesystem bootcode.
Bootcode was successfully updated on all targeted volumes.
Now your thumbdrive is ready to be used as boot drive!
Put Windows 7 on your bootable thumbdrive
Now you have to move all the files required for installation to the USB thumbdrive you prepared. Now you have 3 choices:
- Windows 7 is on a DVD:
Just put the DVD into your DVD drive, open the Windows Explorer, rightclick the drive and select “Explore”. Now use CTRL + A to mark all files on the DVD, press CTRL + C to copy them, go to your thumbdrive and press CTRL + V to paste them. It will take a few minutes to copy all the stuff. - Windows 7 is an image file (*.iso, *.mdf, …)
You can mount the image using a tool such as Daemon Tools to create a virtual DVD drive which tells Windows that the Windows 7 DVD is inserted although it isn’t
When the image is mounted, you can follow the instructions of 1. - Windows 7 is an image file and I don’t want to mount it:
You can use any of the various extracting tools like WinRAR or MagicISO to extract the image file just like a normal ZIP or RAR archive and copy all the files to the thumbdrive. If you chose MagicISO, rightclick in one of the file explorers shown on the top and select “Extract”.
Whatever you do, just make sure that ALL the files from the DVD/Image are on the thumbdrive afterwards!
Prepare the Asus Eee PC to boot from USB devices
Now plug in the prepared USB thumbdrive into your Asus’ USB port. Start the laptop and enter the BIOS setup by pressing F2 immediately after the grey Asus Eee PC screen showed up. Use the arrow keys to navigate to the Boot tab.
Now select “Boot Device Priority” and press enter. Make sure the first boot device is “Removable Dev.”! After that, press escape to go back, navigate to the “Exit” tab and choose “Save changes and Exit”. After saving the BIOS settings, the grey screen will show up again. Now press Escape, it will bring you to a screen where you can select the boot device:
Select “USB” and press enter. You will have a black screen for about 5 seconds, then Windows 7 setup will load!
Follow the steps of the installation until it is done! There shouldn’t be any issus, but if there are, please feel free to comment! After the installation, which will take around 2 hours I guess, the Eee PC with Windows 7 is almost ready for use!
Installing necessary drivers
Surprisingly, Windows 7 already includes WLAN and Audio drivers, so you can surf the internet and play music right from the beginning on.
Video drivers are not supplied. Without them, Windows 7 can only display a resolution of 800×600 and can’t use any of the special stuff, so you should get them. Sadly, Intel doesn’t supply and for Windows 7 yet, and the normal Asus Driver disk doesn’t even contain some for Windows Vista. You can download the latest Intel GMA 915 drivers here: Intel Download Center.
You have to run them in Compability Mode for Windows Vista in order for them to work! Rightclick the executable, select “Properties”, “Compability” and tick “Run this program in compability for: Windows Vista”. Then the installation should work.
You can do the same trick with all other driver supplied by Asus, but acutally you don’t need to do it. I just kept the drivers Windows 7 installed for me.
Aero on the Asus Eee PC
Even with the new Intel Graphics Drivers, Aero isn’t running! I didn’t find a way to get it started yet, even all the registry hacks suggested didn’t help. Either they work for Vista only and not for Windows 7, or the GMA 915 is too worse even to try it out. If you find a way for it to work, please tell me!!