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.
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Yes you can but its depend on type on bios system that your laptop have.
THANK YOU SO MUCH THIS YOUR ADVICE REALLY HELPED. NOW I GOT WIN XP ON MY EEE PC 4G LAPTOP.
please i want to install the windows XP on my Asus Eee pc. so help me. i want to buy the XP software on a pendrive. thanks
thanks men i mean i had the same idea with external dvd drive (i have to buy it first ) but i would forget to set everything to 2.0 usb . . . so thx for the update
Hello i have a eee pc and i need to install programs like .exe programs, and i cant. this is frustrating to me and i ask you for ur help. ty!!!
Hi Zachary,
You have to install Windows before you can install any .exe files, as the Eee comes with Linux by default. This post shows how to install Windows XP on a first generation 4GB Eee PC. Hope it helps!
hi i read every thing and tried….but in bios setting after hitting F2 Advanced…i can see 3 options 1 IDE configuration 2 onboard devices configurition 3 CPU configuration…..nothing as you say, OS installation set it to Start….
Hmm, you may have a newer bios installed. Have you tried simply skipping this step since there is no such option?
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