Install Vista on Dell Mini 9 (USB) Part 2

Install Vista on Dell Mini 9 (USB) Part 2

The informations about install vista on dell mini 9 is continue...

To see Part 1 about Install Vista on Dell Mini 9 ( USB ) Part 1 Here http://shopbatt.blogspot.com/2009/03/install-vista-on-dell-mini-9-usb.html





Tablet PC is useless to me since the dell Mini 9 netbook has no touch screen so that’s 391MB saved. System Restore isn’t a big install in itself, but the feature uses a lot of space as I’ve said before. I use WinRAR so I don’t need Zip Folder.

As you can see, I saved 5GB by removing the features I really wouldn’t use anyway. I’m not even losing performance or features! Go vLite!

10. Click next, and you may get warnings about certain disabled features being required by other enabled features. In my case it was about Windows Media Player and a few other utilities requiring the Windows Media Codecs. I’m installing a codec pack so I just said No.





11. The next section provides some tweaks to customize your Vista experience. I set UAC to Disabled since that’s the first thing I do when I install Vista anyway. In the System tab I disabled Hibernation since the solid state drive is fast enough to not require that kind of performance. The system is so low power anyway that Standby will last quite a while. Hibernation just takes up extra disk space. The rest of the options are personal preference and shouldn’t affect install size. Hit Next when you are done.

12. This last stage is for performing Unattended installs, or using the features that automatically select the options that the install would otherwise prompt you for. Fill this out at your discretion.
13. You can now hit Apply to start the “scrubbing”. You may get the same prompt from step 10 about dependent features and you can give the same response here as you did then.


14. A pop up will ask which version of Vista you would like to rebuild. To save on install size just choose the one you plan on using. I am using Vista Ultimate 32-bit, so I chose Rebuild one (Ultimate)


15. Press OK, and away vLite goes! Since I didn’t integrate any hotfixes and only really stripped data out of the install, the process only took about 25 minutes.


16. Once it finishes you can hit Finish, and the program will close. Check out how big the Vista installation folder is on your hard drive. I bet it’s a lot smaller than the original files!

Step 3 - Transfer Vista Install Files to USB Flash Drive
This is a pretty short step, and probably doesn’t even require an entire step anyway. But, if you didn’t do step 2, you need a nice home to land, so here you are:

If you did follow step 2, copy the contents of your Vista installation folder to your freshly formatted flash drive
If you didn’t follow step 2, copy the contents of your Vista installation media (DVD/CD/ISO) to your freshly formatted flash drive
When your copy completes you can close all windows looking at the flash drive and use the Safely Remove Hardware feature to remove the drive.

Step 4 - Install Windows Vista from USB Flash Drive


1. With the Mini 9 powered off insert the flash drive into any of the available USB ports and turn the Mini 9 on
2. When the Dell symbol pops up hit the number ‘0′ to load the Boot Menu
3. Choose USB Storage and press Enter; the Vista installation should begin!
4. Depending on what you selected in vLite’s Unattended Install section (if anything) you’ll get various prompts during the install process. Proceed according to a normal Vista installation. The only prompt that may be confusing is the drive/partition configuration stage. Because of the small size of the hard drives in these netbooks I doubt anyone will be wanting to dual-boot. Here are the steps for wiping the drive and installing just Vista:


1. Select the only Disk/Partition that should be listed
2. Click the Advanced options link
3. Select Delete
4. Click OK to confirm the pop up
5. You should only have Disk 0 Unallocated Space listed, so click Next (don’t bother creating a new partition, the install will now do it automatically



5. So begins the actual install. Copying files will take about 2 minutes, expanding files will take about 15 minutes, and the rest (including a few restarts) can take up to an hour. Mine sat at Completing Installation for a long time when I ran the vLite stripped version, but I don’t think that’s normal.



Here is a screenshot of my 16GB drive’s space usage. Does this convince anyone that stripping Vista down is useful?



Step 5 - Initial Setup
When you first create your account and log into Vista it may immediately restart, but this is just Vista installing some final features, so don’t worry about it. The first thing you’ll notice is that your screen resolution probably looks wrong; this is because your graphics drivers probably aren’t installed. No matter, what we really need to do is install one of the Mini 9’s network connection drivers, and most of the rest will fall into place via Windows Update. I have found the drivers for both the ethernet and the wireless cards (at least on my machine, I don’t know if they have different models) so you can use your flash card to transfer them from another computer. Please use the manufacturer’s links if you can help it.

Ethernet - Realtek
Realtek Links - Site 1, Site 2, Site 3
Local Mirror - Install_Vista_6213_1119.zip

Wireless - Arcadyne Wireless LAN
Dell Link - R197390.EXE
Local Mirror - R197390.EXE

I would recommend starting with the Realtek drivers. The install I have listed above will detect your card and install the drivers for it automatically. It makes life very simple. (I did have a problem during one of my installs where the Realtek installer complained of an XCopy problem. To solve this, I downloaded just the driver without the installer from Site 1, Site 2, or Site 3. You can then go into device manager, right-click the Ethernet Controller, and select Update Drivers. Choose to Browse on your local hard drive and find the folder you extracted the drivers to.)

Once you have your network controllers set up you can go ahead and run Windows Update. You may need to install a Windows Update update (sheesh, don’t ever use that phrase in normal conversation), and Windows Update kepy on closing itself for me. I suspect it was the update installing, but eventually Windows Update will actually find a list of updates. Make sure you click View Available Updates and check the different hardware drivers in addition to the regular updates. Drivers that mine found were:

Intel Display
Creative Webcam
After all of these updates are installed (and you restart your machine if necessary) we will need to install the last few drivers that Windows Update didn’t find.




First, we’ll want to install Dell’s battery meter software. You don’t actually need the software, so you can uninstall it immediately afterwards. All we need is the driver is installs and leaves on your machine. Go ahead and download it here. After installing restart the computer and uninstall the Battery Meter software if you wish.

I had an issue with getting an error about Windows Media Player crashing all the time. This is probably due to the vLite strip, and the fix I found was to copy this dll into C:\Windows\System32 and then running C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe.

After this you should only have two unknown devices in Device Manager, both called Base System Device. Dell’s JMicron driver will take care of these.

Conclusion
And that’s it, folks! Your Device Manager should be free of unknown devices, and your Dell Mini 9 is ready for the Vista Life! Please post any concerns or suggestions. I hope this guide helps people.

Related Blog Thread :

Instal Vista On Dell Mini 9 ( USB ) Part 1

Informations from : Install Vista on Dell Mini 9 (USB)