Install Vista on Dell Mini 9 (USB)

Install Vista on Dell Mini 9 (USB)

Introduction :

I recently bought a prink Dell Mini 9 netbooks. ( Informations on blog My cute Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook ) . As a newbie, I found some informations about how to install vista on dell mini 9 netbook. If some one who is just looking for the informations, follow me...

Required

Dell Mini 9 (duh)
Another computer with a Windows operating system (preferably Vista)
USB Flash drive (at least 2GB, although that’s assuming you are stripping the install with vLite…if not you’ll need a 4GB drive) If enough people express interest in an alternative method I will write a guide for installing Vista over the network. Flash drive prices are plummeting with the growing popularity flash chips (due mostly to solid state drives) so a 4GB drive isn’t all that expensive anymore. Still, network installs can be easier if set up correctly and are a damn fun accomplishment to have under your belt.
Windows Vista CD/DVD/ISO
vLite (optional)

Step 1 - Prepare USB Flash Drive

1. Insert the flash drive into your Windows machine and back up anything from the flash drive that you wanted to keep. We’re going to reformat it.
2. Open up a command prompt.
3. Type diskpart and press Enter. After a second you should have the prompt DISKPART>
4. Type list disk. A list of your connected hard drives will appear. Make sure you see your flash drive on the list. In the example below my 4GB flash drive is Disk 2.



5. Type select disk 2 but change the disk number to whatever your drive is. Make sure you get this right. If you continue with these steps on the wrong disk you’ll end up erasing all of that drive’s contents. Be careful.
6. Type clean. It should only take a few seconds to clean.
7. Now type create partition primary. This command should complete almost immediately.
8. Type select partition 1
9. Type active
10. Type format fs=fat32 to format the flash drive. This took about 6 minutes on my drive.
11. Lastly, type assign and then exit
12. Format complete! You can close the command prompt


Step 2 - Reduce Vista Installation (Optional)

The Dell Mini 9 comes with a solid state harddrive which is a blessing and a curse. On the plus side you get better read/write/seek speeds, improved battery life, and better shock protection than rotating platter hard drives. Unfortunately it’s still an expensive technology, and the price-per-gig of solid state drives is much higher. The Mini 9s come with a 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, and now even a 32GB drive. I have the 16GB drive and you definitely want as much space as you can get with this smaller drives. The software vLite will take Vista Install media and provide tons of customization and stripping options. You can skip this step and go straight to loading Vista on the flash drive, but I would highly recommend it.

These instructions cover the process I followed. I would definitely like to develop this process to obtain the smallest install size possible, though, so please post any tips you come across and I’ll keep checking the dellmini9 blog for more useful tidbits.


1. Download and install vLite v1.2 Final
2. vLite requires the WAIK to run, but after installing it and restarting vLite still said that I needed it. The fix for me was to download the Windows Imaging Driver and extract the three files into the vLite Program Files directory. For more vLite installation help please visit their forum and post your situation in the comments here. If there is a common problem I’ll add the solution to the guide.
3. Insert your Vista DVD/CD or mount your Vista ISO. I used an ISO but the steps should be the same. (Make sure you have at least 4-5GB of space on your computer.)
4. Load up vLite and browse to your disk drive with the Vista installation media
5. vLite will ask you where to put the files on your hard drive to modify them. Create a directory wherever is easiest for you. I chose C:\vista



6. After you click OK vLite will proceed to copy all of the files from the Vista installation media to your hard drive. This will take a few minutes. After copying the files vLite will analyze your install quickly and show you it’s information. Go ahead and read that if you want and then press Next
7. vLite will give you a list of Tasks that it can run on your Vista install files. Since this guide is meant for decreasing the install size I will only focus on Components, Tweaks, and Unattended setup, since these Tasks will let you strip the install to the bare minimum. Check those three Tasks. Integration is always something interesting to look into as you can slipstream service packs and updates into your install, but since it means a bigger initial install we’ll ignore it for now. We don’t need to create a Bootable ISO since we will just be copying these files to the flash drive instead of burning a CD/DVD, so we’ll ignore that too. Go ahead and click next.
8. The next screen will have a pop up asking what features or applications that you plan to use. This will be up to you but this is the configuration I used:



I didn’t check anything in the Applications tab so I didn’t bother posting a screenshot. As far as I know this tab merely checks the programs on your current machine that rely on Vista system files so that you don’t remove something that those programs really need. Since this install isn’t even meant for this computer anyway I found no use for this tab.
I intentionally left System Restore off because it uses so much space. With a 16GB hard drive (or less) I’m not too worried about losing anything. It’s not meant to be a main machine. I don’t need it wasting precious space just duplicating my data in a backup.


9. Click OK and you will now be able to further customize the install by choosing components to remove. This is also up to your preferred configuration, but I will post mine:



I removed Speech Support because never once have I felt the urge to “talk” my computer through anything. That’s just 450MB of wasted space to me.



I removed all display adapters except for Intel’s since I know the Mini 9 has an Intel chip. I have done the install without scrubbing with vLite, however, and the disk didn’t have the drivers. I had to download them through Windows Update anyway so you can probably even remove those as well, but just to be safe I included them.

I removed the Ethernet and modem drivers since I know that my Vista disk doesn’t have them anyway. Rather than installing all of those space-hogging drivers I’d rather just have Windows Update download and install just the ones it needs.

The other drivers are wasted space since the Mini 9 doesn’t even have any of this hardware anyway. If you hook up a scanner or printer in the future Windows Update will just download the appropriate driver anyway. You can save about 800MB of space by doing this (printer drivers alone take up 700MB).






Again, the things I checked were for hardware I knew I wouldn’t need or use. I kept the networking hardware features since the Mini 9 will stress a lot of network usage since it’s so small and low capacity.
I checked the entire Languages section. You save an entire 1.1GB by doing this. I never need other languages but if worst comes to worst they are very easy to install from Windows Update later.





I removed all codecs since I’ll be installing the K-lite Mega Codec Pack which has all of them. I have always hated the sample movies, pictures, and music so I removed those, and I don’t plan on editing movies on the Mini 9 so goodbye Movie Maker. I much prefer XBMC to Media Center so that’s gone too.
All I removed in the Network section was Windows Mail. Like I mentioned above, I’ll be needing as many network features as possible, so I was pretty lenient with this. Plus, the file size for this entire section is only 151MB. I left the Services section completely alone. I didn’t want to disable something that I would end up needing later, and this section is only 155MB. Feel free to remove service at your leisure but your mileage may vary.



I’ve never found Windows Help useful, so goodbye. Since I already disabled Speech, the 550MB of Natural Language support is useless. The rest is personal preference to remove small features.




To see more Install Vista on Dell Min 9 ( USB ) Part 2 >>>