Installing Windows XP on the Asus Eee PC
So, today when I went to overclock the FSB on my Eee PC, as I have been doing for the past week or so, everything went crazy and when I rebooted the Eee, I was met with the picture above. I then rebooted again in recovery mode, and no matter what I tried, I could not resurrect xwindows, given my novice level linux skills. Boo.
So, instead of reinstalling Ubuntu, I went ahead and installed XP on the Eee. Why? Because I have a legal copy lying around unused and because I was going to have to install XP anyway to take advantage of the touchscreen panel I plan on installing on this sucker (it’s ordered and *should* arrive on Monday; w00t). Besides, all the programs I was using regularly in Ubuntu (Firefox and Pidgin) are available for Windoze and I can install a few Windoze games on here now if I really want to (I have a 16GB flash drive I’m going to be installing internally when I add the touchscreen).
In any case, installation of XP on the Eee is simple:
1. Plug in an external DVD drive via USB (I had a Newertech USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter lying around so I picked up a cheap Panasonic internal drive from Best Buy and used that).
2. Start your Eee and Hit F2 at the Asus start up screen, so that you can change some settings in the BIOS.
3. Navigate to Advanced—>OS Installation and set it to Start.
4. Press F10 to save and boot.
5. When the start up screen appears again, hit Esc and choose your external USB CD/DVD drive from the list of options. Make sure your XP installation disk is in the drive before moving on.
6. Remember to hit a key when the little text pops up saying “Hit any key to boot from CD…” or whatever it says.
7. Then just follow normal Windows installation. You’ll have to delete the internal drive’s partition before Windows will let you format and install.
8. After installation is fully complete and Windows has rebooted, slap teh DVD that came with your Eee PC into the DVD-ROM drive and run the Install All drivers wizard. You’ll have to reboot 3 times.
9. After that finishes then you’re done. Grab AVG Free Editionand run Windows Update to ensure you’re safe from viruses / security holes, grab Firefox (*), and grab Mahalo Follow (*) while you’re at it. 
Also, Pidgin (*) is an excellent little cross-platform chat program.
What’s cool about Windows XP on the Eee? Well for one thing, you can set the display to 800×600 and the mouse will scroll the screen down or up (so more screen real estate through a hat trick). Also, I’ll finally be able to run the software that came with my Sony Portable Reader (*). Rock. More later.
UPDATE: OH YEAH! After you finish everything make sure you hit F2 at startup again and toggle install from Start to Finished (otherwise your USB 2.0 peripherals will only function at USB 1.1 speeds).
Also, for more details on how to do this, see Sean’s post.
January 9th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
If you don’t have an external cdrom you can install from a USB flashdrive following this guide: http://www.eeeguides.com/2007/11/installing-windows-xp-from-usb-thumb.html
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:12 am
I just wanted to say thank you so much. It is 2 o’clock in the morning and I have been working with my Eee PC since about 2 this afternoon trying to upgrade memory and switch to XP. Your post was a huge help, thank you.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:13 am
When you say delete all partions I have 4 maybe 5 partions on the eee pc when I tried to install xp this included one that was a bios partion. Do you remove them all or just remove the 2 that are roughly 2.3 gb and 1.4 gd in size.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Hi, Matt,
The BIOS isn’t on the physical internal drive itself. Just erase all the partitions on that drive. The one smaller partition there is actually the restore point image for the default Xandros install, so you *could* try to keep it if you wanted.
Cheers,
C.K.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Thank you for the information. I just want to know what type of RAM EEE pc use and can we upgrade the Disk? Hopefully you can help on this.
Thanks in advanced.
January 30th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Wow finally this little thing is awesome for tuning cars but i couldnt figure out how to install XP all i had to do was change it to OS insall start. I feel kinda stupid now. since i’m an IT major. But this really helped thanx alot.. the ram is PC5300 DDR2 i am currently running 2GB of ram on my 4GB model.
February 1st, 2008 at 6:06 pm
One question that I’ve had, and having read many upon many of these walkthroughs is yet to be answered, is: For a non-techie, how would one go about removing the partitions?
I’ve gathered answers to the rest of my questions from various sources, but that’s one that my non-hacker mind has yet to figure out.
February 1st, 2008 at 8:13 pm
umm I’m kinda new to the Eee, so will it be dual boot?? as in when you attach the external flash you can use windows and when you remove it, it returns to a linux??
February 1st, 2008 at 8:56 pm
@Rob: I’ve seen walkthroughs from people that use dual boot, and I’ve seen explanations on how to remove Linux and run XP solely.
February 1st, 2008 at 9:03 pm
@Rob: you can set it up to dual boot, although XP install easiest on the internal drive. I installed XP to the main drive recently and installed another 16GB flash thumb drive internally that I am installing other OSes on. It can dual-boot, triple boot, etc.
@Cameron: If you’re installing XP or Ubuntu, there is a part of the installation process where you can choose to format the drive (in the formatting process you wipe out the previous partitions).
February 1st, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Ohh..Thanks! Can you please post a link on how to make the Eee dual boot? Because I really can’t find one xD
February 1st, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Hi Rob,
The key is to install OSes on different devices. At boot you can hold down the ESC key to pick which device you want to boot off of. If you have more than one OS on a single device, then you’ll have to have a bootloader installed on that device itself. I haven’t taken that step yet.
February 2nd, 2008 at 12:31 am
See?
I figured it would be something rediculously easy like that, but unfamiliar with the lingo, I thought I should make sure before I started.
Thanks.
February 4th, 2008 at 2:40 am
Hi guys,I’m facing problem to detect the built-in webcam after installed winXP pro on my eee PC. How to make this webcam available?.
February 7th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Any idea why I have a partial boot up only into XP when the SD card is in the slot? I need to reboot without the card in and then its okay. Also, the BIOS boot order is SSD then the card so I don’t get it. When it reboots, I can access the card no problem. Its the only issue I faced after the XP intallation on the EEE PC.
Thanks
February 10th, 2008 at 8:56 am
O.K. So I have XP installed. Now I can use my Verizon USB modem, as I’m doing now!
But I have another question….
[quote]you can set the display to 800×600 and the mouse will scroll the screen down or up (so more screen real estate through a hat trick).[/quote]
How do you do this? From Control Panel–>Appearance & Themes–>Screen Resolution
I have no options available. The 640×480 that it starts with is all that’s available. I can’t change it.
I apologize if I’m a bit of an idiot, but your step by step and feedback have been the most useful that I’ve found to date. I mean, hey, I can’t even manage to change this, but by following your instructions I’ve successfully installed XP.
February 12th, 2008 at 3:33 am
^Nevermind about that. I just reinstalled the drivers and it worked fine.
February 27th, 2008 at 1:12 am
I can’t install webcam and modem for winxp. And unknow name this webcam. Help me plz
February 29th, 2008 at 10:00 am
C.K.,
Do you know if someone found a way to install windows XP 2000? There was a problem with the page.sys file or something.
thanks,
Roberto
March 5th, 2008 at 6:50 am
thanks
May 9th, 2008 at 1:12 am
does xp fits n runs good on a 2gb w/ 512mb ram (eee pc surf)? i have a 2gb sd memory card with it i wanna use xp because i want to use zone alarm internet suit, firefox and a voip program and maybe counter strike if it fits
May 9th, 2008 at 11:13 am
I don’t have the 2GB version so I cannot say, but it runs OK (not lightning fast) on the 4GB. My guess is that the 2GB would be too cramped to run nicely. You’d constantly be running out of disk space.
May 14th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Hi,
If i want to keep the Linux and install the new Win XP, waht should i do?Please help. Thanks
May 24th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Great and simple guide, thanks a lot. One problem I’m having, though, is that at any given point a notification will tell me that a file is corrupted or missing and setup will fail… (so far: 1. “pcmcia.sys is corrupted,” 2. “\i386\vgaoem.fon could not be loaded” 3. a message telling me windows has shut down to prevent damage to the computer)
May 26th, 2008 at 9:41 am
I found out it’s because my asus doesnt have enough disk space. supposedly 2.3 gb are being used by the system. how do i free up space to avoid problem #3 from above (the warning suggested there might not be enough space on the disk drive)
May 28th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Excellent guide, helped up move my EEE from Japanese to English version of XP. One problem though - when I install XP, I only have about 200 Mb free on my 4Gb card, which quickly drops to under 90Mb. This isn’t enough to install any updates or even SP3.
Anyone know how I can reduce the XP footprint to something closer to what the Japanese install managed? (I think they only used about 2.5 Gb or something).
June 7th, 2008 at 3:59 am
Marc;
Use nLite to compress and get rid of stuff u dont need or cant use on the EEE PC. Good guides on eeeuser.com
That, or google nLite xp for EEE PC
June 17th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
hey man tnx for the info i will try to install xp on my 2gb model i hope it works
its been very hard for me to use linux coz it has a very limited acces.. i hope i will have enough memory to intall some program that gonna be my problem right tnx man your a genius…
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:54 am
Hey guys, good to-the-point guide.
I was wondering if anybody had tried to isntall windows 2000 pro whatever SP.
In addition, anybody manage to install an OS on a memory card and boot from it? It would be cool ot have a few memory cards containing different OS’s, to use when you feel like it, just a thought.
July 7th, 2008 at 4:16 am
@Aaron: that sounds like you either have a dodgy XP CD, external CD/DVD drive or (unfortunately more likely) some bad RAM.
To install XP to an SD Card: http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:installxp
Note that this involves wiping the internal SSD.
Another Note: If you use nLite to shrink your Windows installation disc, http://www.winaddons.com/nlite-addons has some handy slipstream packages to add to the image (FireFox, OpenOffice, Pidgin et al) to save installing them later.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Is there any way to install from an original XP disc, that does not have Service Pack 2, I keep getting blue error screens stopping the install on my 4G Surf.
August 21st, 2008 at 8:54 am
Hey man
Thanks alot for this, im going to try it when i get home!!
Just one question, what the fluff is a partion? Im a noob when it comes to EEE pc’s, i mean i do SEO for a living and i cant even do this, dam i hope my boss doesn’t see this!!
August 29th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
i also got a blue error screen that stops the windows installation on my 4G, what shall i do to get rid of that error message?