BradGroux.com - Blogger, Geek, Know It All, Smartass.

In the last couple of days we’ve brought you the unboxing of a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 running Ubuntu Linux along with our first impressions. Well, today we are bringing you a step by step guide to installing Windows 7 on the little bugger. While this article focuses on the installation of the Windows 7 Beta on the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 the process is nearly identical for a normal installation on any other modern system.

Prerequisites
To perform any kind of operating system installation you are going to need an external DVD drive because netbooks obviously don’t have an internal DVD drive. I used an LG Super Multi Blue courtesy of AC for this installation that was obviously overkill, but did the job anyway. Thanks to him for that.

You’ll also need a beta installation of Windows 7 which as we’ve mentioned before used to be available here. You can find multiple torrents of the beta at the popular torrent search engines for download, which is legal… just remember to register a product key here.

The Installation
1. You’ll need to be quick, but when the Dell logo pops up when you start the machine you need to quickly hit 2 on the keyboard to bring up the temporary boot menu. You can also hit 0 (zero) to bring up the actual BIOs configuration to change the boot order if you prefer. From the temporary boot menu choose removable devices… if for some reason that doesn’t work try CD/DVD/CD-RW.

2. Once you hit "any key to boot from CD…" the installation files will begin to load.

3. At the first prompt choose your language of choice and hit next.

4. Then install now.

5. Wait for a moment as setup begins…

6. Accept the license terms and hit next.

7. Choose the Custom (advanced) option because you can’t upgrade from Ubuntu and you don’t want to upgrade from XP.

8. Select the largest partition which should be Disk 0 Partition 2 and hit delete. You can also delete the OEM (reserved) partition if you like but I chose to leave it seeing as it’s only 23MB.

9. Select the Disk 0 Unallocated Space and hit new. I chose to use all of the disk space available, I wouldn’t go under 10GB for Windows 7. After creating the new partition and selecting it hit next.

10. At this point the installation begins to copy the needed files.

11. About 35 minutes later the installation checklist should complete, although the time may vary based upon your installed memory. I performed the installation with 1GB of memory which took approximately 35 minutes. After the checklist is complete the machine will automatically reboot.

12. After the reboot you’ll need to enter a username and computer name. I chose Brad Groux for the username and Echoplex for the computer name. Hit next after making your entry.

13. You’ll then need to enter a password and password hint. The password isn’t required but seeing as this is a notebook it never hurts. Hit next after making your entry.

14. Next up is the Windows update settings… always choose Use Recommended Settings unless you have a reason not to. Updates=Good.

15. Make sure your date, time and time zone are correct; mine was off by 7 hours. Hit next when you’re ready to move on.

16. If you are connected to a network you’ll be prompted to set your network location location. If you aren’t hardwired to a network and wireless networks are available you will be prompted to choose a wireless network or to skip the network portion. I was hardwired to a network so this was the screen that I saw.

17. After the previous step, Windows will take 1-2 minutes to finalize your settings.

18. Then the magic elves begin to prepare your desktop, another 1-2 minutes.

19. Yay; our first look at the betta fish! I love that little guy.

20. Pretty Windows 7…

21. DONE!

Post Installation
1. Drive Usage: I was pleased to see that Windows 7 was only using about 7GB of drive space. I’m sure I can tweak this down to even more, look for a future post on that soon.

2. Drivers: Windows 7 caught nearly all of the drivers. Right out of the box the touch pad, sound, video, wireless network, wired network, webcam and bluetooth all worked with no updates. There was only a "base system device" and an "unknown device" found in device manager that need drivers. The system even amazingly recognized my Logitech VX Nano Cordless Mouse.

3. Windows Experience Index: I was kind of shocked by the Windows Experience Index. It seems that the solid state drive may be the weakest link in the components. I’ll rerun these tests once I do some tweaking and upgrade to 2GB of memory. I have always taken these index scores with a grain of salt however… take them as you will.

4. Resource Usage: CPU usage sits in an idle state of 5-9% while memory usage sits around 510-520MB;  given the specs of this machine that’s not bad. The usage obviously spikes drastically when performing tasks.

Conclusions
The entire installation process took about an hour of total time with about 10 minutes of that being "hands on" time. Windows 7 runs just as well if not better than Ubuntu Linux with the same system resources. I actually see better memory utilization out of Windows 7 than Ubuntu, and the "choppy-ness" and system lag that I experienced with Ubuntu is now gone. While the system runs okay with 1GB of RAM I still can’t stress enough the need to spring for a 2 gigabyte memory stick for just $25.

I’ll make a follow up post later regarding detailed performance… in the meantime I’m going netbooking.