About a year ago I purchased a nice little machine from ASUS.
It is an Atom N270:

When I opened the box, the machine was preloaded with Windows XP. It performs well with XP, and has 1 GB ram, and a 160 GB hard drive. A big mistake I made was installing Vista on it – Very slow.

It only took about a week of pain before I switched back.

So, after hearing all of the big excitement over Windows 7, I wanted to see if it was any better, or faster on this less than powerful machine.

A problem with that is that I do not have a USB DVD/CDROM drive right now, and as you can see from the picture – there are no drives built into that machine.

This means I need to install from a bootable USB memory stick.

I was able to do it, and while I was at it I wrote down what I did so you can too.

What you need:

Copy of Windows 7, and A running version of Vista, Windows 7, or 2008, and a Memory Stick that is at least 4GB in size.

Preparing the USB Memory stick

First, the memory stick needs to be prepared. Make sure you don’t have anything important on it since it will be totally erased.

Put your USB disk in the computer, and wait for it to be recognized. Then get to a command line (Make sure you run that as an administrator)

Type:

DISKPART <ENTER>

This will launch the disk partition program. You need to be real careful here since you can blow away partitions and drives of any drive on your system. Start out by listing the current drives on your system

LIST DISK <ENTER>

You should be able to identify your drive from this list:

So looking at the list, I know that DISK 1 is my flash drive. Make sure you properly identify your drive, or risk destroying important data.

Next, lets run the commands that will prepare your drive.

Note that disk1 is what we determined before. If by chance you have a nice fat USB hard drive sitting on your desk and it happens to be disk 1, and not your flash drive – you will erase everything!

Be careful!

Type this into DISKPART:

select disk1
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32
assign
exit

Now your flash drive is bootable.

Copying the Install Disk

Now the disk is bootable. Get your Windows 7 Install disk and copy the entire disk to your flash drive. With my computer, F: was the flash drive, and G: was the DVD ROM drive with the install disk. Copy the files from the command line like this:

xcopy g:\ f:\ /s/e/f e:\

Installing From Flash

Now, reboot and go into your BIOS and make sure it is set to boot from flash devices. I wish I could create a nice tutorial for this but there are so many different BIOS menus it would be difficult. Here is what mine looks like:

So make sure it is the first boot option, and you should be ready to install Windows 7 right from a flash drive. Save your changes, reboot…and install goodness will commence.

So you may be asking. How fast is it? Is it slow as Vista or Better than XP? I will let you know next time

The original Vista Bootscreen is very similar to Windows 2000, and is very bland and boring (you know, with the little catepillar bar scrolling from left-to-right).

But did you know that Vista comes with a much better highly visual bootscreen? Did you know how easy it is to enable it? No?

Microsoft may not have enabled this by default because of potential hardware issues, but that doesn’t make sense because the minimum video card requirements to even run Vista should handle the new bootscreen without any problem. In either case, here is how to make Vista look that much cooler with the “Aurora” bootscreen…

1. First start by running msconfig (either from the Run dialog or Start menu search box).
2. Click on the Boot tab, and then click the “No GUI boot” checkbox. Click OK.

The operating system Vista does not use traditional Boot.ini of the former versions for the dualboot (or the multiboot). Indeed, Microsoft set up a utility in line of order to modify these parameters; all these parameters of starting of Vista are preserved in a register called “Windows Vista Boot Configuration Dated (BCD)”. You will always have the possibility of doing it manually, for that to modify these parameters in this BCD, you must use the tool of the name of “bcdedit.exe” integrated into Vista and which functions in line of orders, not always obvious to realize. This is why the software “VistaBootPro 3.1” will be to you of a great help and with its interface the possibility will give you of carrying out these changes of BCD simply.

1. Installation of VistaBootPRO Currently the version of “VistaBootPRO” is that Ci: “VistaBootPRO 3.1 Beta”. Once you went on the official site, after having downloaded the software and having launched achievable “the VistaBootPRO_3.1.0.exe”, this will be obtained:
2. Click on “Next (According to)” until obtaining this:
3. Notch the box “Launch VistaBootPRO 3.1 (Lancer VistaBootPRO 3.1)” then click on “Finish (To close)” to finish the installation of “VistaBootPRO”.

To safeguard your data with VistaBootPRO It is advised to carry out a safeguard of the BCD (Boot Configuration Dated), for that before any modification click on the icon of the name of “Backup/Restore Center”

It will then be enough for you to click on “Save” to launch the operation of safeguard of the BCD (Boot Configuration Dated), a window will open and will ask you to record the file of the name of “VBP_Backup.bcd” on your hard disk, click on “Recording”, you will obtain then this message “Successfully backed up BCD to D:\VBP _Backup.bcd” like this:

What means that my safeguard of my file “VBP_Backup.bcd” is on my disc of letter “D: ”. Once our safeguard will be made we will be able to pass at the following stage.

Diagnose with VistaBootPRO

To make a diagnosis of our computer and to thus see the various operating systems installed on our PC, it will be enough for you to click on “Diagnoses (Diagnoses)” then on “Run Diagnostics (Launch the Diagnostic one)” like this:

As soon as you make modifications with the software “VistaBootPRO”, start again the operation in order to avoid errors, and with each time this modification is correct it is advised to you to carry out a safeguard of the BCD (Boot Configuration Dated). Note: Before further going will know that a bad handling will prevent the machine from starting, gifts it is strongly to advise to use it with prudence.

Modification of starting with VistaBootPRO

To modify the mode of starting or the noun of your system on “Manages OS Entries”, you will have to click on next button. You will see that in the zone “OS List (List of the Operating systems OS)”, you have 3 to know: “Earlier Version of Windows”, “Vista Microsoft Windows” and “Vista Microsoft Windows”, see more closely what means the various colors in the list of the operating systems.

• The color “Blue” indicates the operating system per defect (The “Blue” colored text specify the “Default OS. ”)
• The “black” color indicates a “valid” system in the BCD (Boot Configuration Dated). (The “Black” colored text specify has normal “Valid” entry in the BCD Store.)
• The “red” color indicates an “invalid” system in the BCD (Boot Configuration Dated), or containing errors. (The “Red” colored texts specify “Invalid” entries in the BCD Store.)

Once you know the significance of the various colors, it will not any more remain you but to choose if you wish for example to start your computer on your old operating system instead of that of “Vista Microsoft Windows”. For that it will be enough for you to click on “Earlier Version of Windows (black)” then of notching the box “Set have Default (To define by defect)”. And if you find that the name of “Earlier Version of Windows” is not appropriate to you and that you wish to give him another name, for example “Microsoft Windows XP Professional”. It will then be enough for you to also notch the box “Rename selected operating system (To re-elect the operating system selects)”. Then you will have to click on “Apply (To apply)”,

And here during your next restarting of your computer, the operating system per defect will not be any more “Vista Microsoft Windows” but “Microsoft Windows XP Professional”.

Other functionalities of VistaBootPRO

You will have also the possibility of consulting the parameters of your computer while clicking on “View Settings” or the icon of the name of “Advanced Settings (Parameters advances)” which will enable you to regulate certain parameters of “Vista Microsoft Windows” .

Note for all readers : These devices are designed for the advance user and are only recommended for the users who include/understand the implications of the changes which will be made. Here the list proposed: “Boot VGA Enabled (to boot into VGA mode uses), Boot GUI Disabled Mode (the alternate boot screen uses), Allow uses of unsigned drivers (x64 Edition Only), PAE Enabled (Physical Address Extension), EPD One (Execution Prevention Dated), Debug the boot process (yew receiving boot errors Uses), Run Vista in Kernel-Debug Mode (not recommended unless developer), Run in S.O.S Mode (Verbose Boot Mode, unfavorable No effects), Deduct Memory (MB) (Uncheck to reset) etLimit CPU’ S (Uncheck to reset)”. And here are we however will not go further in the explanations, except if you make the request of it on our forum.

Related Posts:

• Uninstall vista bootloader
• Setting Up A Dual-Boot Linux And Vista PC
• Turn your XP into Vista!