So I have one of the fairly new Dell Mini9 Netbooks that came out around Thanksgiving? Maybe earlier, I cannot remember. The only thing I do remember was waiting until Dell entered the Netbook market before buying a netbook. I could hardly wait! And I have been pretty happy with it so far. But... it has Windows XP on it. I wanted Vista on it but I knew better than to try that! So when Microsoft released the beta for Windows 7, and everyone talked about how much faster it was than Vista I thought I would try that on my Mini9.

BOOT DEVICE

So first thing, obviously there is no CD or DVD to install an OS from like on most laptops. You can buy one as an optional USB attachment, but why? So you will need to create a bootable USB Flash Drive with Windows 7 on it.

To do this:

You also MUST have a DVD copy of Vista to install the source files from the DVD to a USB flash drive:

1. Insert your USB flash drive and enter the following commands: (please note this list assumes that your USB flash drive will be seen as disk 1. To confirm that it is type "list disk" after you've entered the DISKPART command) Otherwise you may wipe a different drive (such as your hard disk drive!)
2. Type:

diskpart
select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32 (this step can take a while...)
assign
exit

At this point your USB drive is formatted. DO NOT format the drive from within Windows. You MUST have a DVD copy of Vista to copy the source files from.

The final preparation step is to copy the installation files to your flash drive, this can be done by running the following command:
(Please note D: is the drive letter for the source files and E: is the drive letter for your flash drive, if they are different on your system you need to change them accordingly).
Exit DISKPART. Type:

xcopy D:\*.* /s/e/f E:\

Now your USB Key should be ready to go. So since the USB key is setup, you must now setup your Mini9 to boot from the USB drive. This proved a bit challenging. At first, I tried just hitting 0 during the POST and selecting one of the devices (external drive I think?) but it would always just boot to XP. So I assumed that was because it did not like that. Sometimes, it would even kind of hang during POST with the progress on the Dell screen at like 99%. So the next thing I tried was changing the boot order in the BIOS. I ended up after some trial and error moving the Hard drive down to the bottom in the boot sequence. I made ‘Removable Device’ and ‘External Device’ the top 2. Also, there was some question as to if they (the boot devices) were enabled or not. So if you see an exclamation next to the device – it is not enabled. So toggle it until there are no Exclamation Points. Once I did that, BANG! It booted right from the USB drive.

Once you set the BIOS this way, it should boot from the USB drive when you restart; and Windows 7 setup will begin.

SETUP

During the setup prompts I had it format the XP partition, and followed the rest of the prompts. The "Expanding Files" portion of setup took a bit of time (10-20 minutes?) but then it moved right along after that. Also note that by putting the USB Stick above the hard drive in the boot order will cause the machine to keep wanting to run setup if you leave the machine unattended. I came back to find mine at the select language screen, and hit next. Only to find that it was at the partition selection screen. I could see the drive was no longer empty, so I assumed that setup had started again by accident. So I removed my USB Key, and rebooted, and setup continued without incident.

After setup completed, after 30 minutes or so, It re-booted and my first prompt was to create a user account and set a computer name. I did this and hit next. It prompted me for a product key, I entered it and hit next. Then choose my Windows Update settings - next. Then set my Time Zone - next. Then... oddly, it immediately asked me which wireless network to join. So I selected my network, entered my WPA2 key and I was off.

Next I was prompted about something called a HomeGroup password. This looks interersting, I will need to research that. But I told it to skip that part since I have an SBS server. Then it prepared my desktop and eventually I was presented with a desktop! Sweet!

DRIVERS

Once the initial install was completed, my first task was to see how the drivers were looking. It saw my Wireless card without issue. And most everything appears to be working fine. There are only 3 things showing in the "Other Devices" tree of the Device Manager:

1. Base System Device

2. Base System Device

3. Unknown Device

Other than that, everything seems to work great. One of things showing up could be Bluetooth related because I have Bluetooth disabled in the BIOS. But then again, if it's disabled at the BIOS level, it should not show in the Device Manager? Oh well, seems to work fine so far.

BOOT TIMES

Boot time was around 30 seconds with Windows XP SP3. I cannot remember if that was until the hourglass went away on the desktop or just when the desktop showed up. I was not that detailed when timing it. Now mind you, I am just using my stopwatch on my Casio so this is no way an official time. So for these purposes, I just waited until I saw the full desktop. And it got there in 34.38 seconds. And interestingly enough, there WAS NO hourglass once the desktop showed. Is that some magic or what? It that some smoke and mirrors to make it seem faster? Who knows?

CONCLUSION

So thats it. Windows 7 is now running on my Dell Mini9 and I will see how it works and keep posting back on the progress, and how it works from day to day.