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Installing Windows Vista On The MSI Wind

Author	Hugo Jobling
Published	13th Jul 2008

Installing Windows Vista On The MSI Wind

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vLite, the program you should now have downloaded, is a really fantastic tool that, simply put, allows you to make your Windows Vista install far smaller than usual. It's actually a front end to a freely available Windows tool designed for system integrators, but it simplifies the process drastically.

vLite works in two ways: first, it allows you to shrink the size of the install medium required, and secondly it allows you to remove Windows components you'll never use from the install, so they don't take up hard drive space for no reason. It is this second aspect that is particularly useful for netbook installs, because it means you can install Vista on, say, a 20GB Eee PC and still have a useable amount of storage left.

Using vLite is pretty simple, you download the program from the website, follow the (really rather good) installation instructions and get started. The first stage of creating your new, ‘lite', Vista install is to copy the contents of your Vista DVD to a folder on your hard drive. If you don't have a Service Pack 1 disc, then now is the time to make one because after shrinking Vista, you can't then install the service pack.

Depending on whether you're putting 32-bit or 64-bit (Atom can cope with both instruction sets) Vista on your netbook, you'll want to download the appropriate stand-alone installer from Microsoft. Then it's simply a case of choosing Slipstream from vLite's menu bar, pointing it at the service pack and waiting - for around two hours in my case.

Having done that, the shrinking process begins. vLite's Components screen allows you to select which Vista components (oddly enough) you want to remove from the install disc you're making. A bit of common sense is required here, as if you're not careful you could make your installation unusable. Playing safe, I stuck to removing things I knew I wouldn't need, such as Aero (Atom won't run it), additional languages (do I look like I speak Slovakian?) and Media Centre (I'll use VLC thanks, it offers more codec support as is only a few MB big).

Having removed everything you don't want, you can then set up a few additional options, such as pre-adding your License Key, computer name and so forth. All these things can be done during the install process itself, though, so it's up to you if you do it now or later. Having done that, hit Apply down on the bottom right, whereupon vLite will go through stripping out all of the components you told it to.

Last but not least, go to the ISO menu and save a new Vista disc as an ISO disc image file. This should be somewhere in the 1GB to 2GB region, depending on how thorough you were stripping components.

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Gavin Hamer said on 15th July 2008

That RAM upgrade info is awesome. Vista on a 2GB Wind might be a little more interesting.

Ajibee said on 15th July 2008

Wind, Schmind - no wonder you're suffering with Wind trying to stuff Vista down a 1GB gullet!

I got an eee 1000H from ebuyer.com last Friday, along with a 2GB SO-DIMM and a 320GB Western Digital 2.5" drive... and then upgraded the eee (an extra £100 on the price, but hey, if you're going to do a job properly...!).

Upgrading the Eee 1000H was straightforward - loosen two captive screws and open the hatch in the base (there is a small eee sticker on one corner, but it doesn't say anything about voiding the warranty on it - and, with a bit of care, the half stuck to the case came away cleanly with the hatch cover and went back just as easily).

Inside you can then swap out the 1GB SO-DIMM and change the 2.5" hard drive (your review of the 1000H is wrong by the way - it's not a 1.8" drive). The original Seagate drive has 80GB spread over two sides of one platter - the 320GB of the WD drive is spread across four sides of two platters - so packs the data twice as densely, and is thus faster at retrieving it).

Then install Vista. I used the 32-bit version - I read at Tweaktown that x64 won't install on a 1000H even if it apparently should. More to the point, x64 is really on worth if if you have over 3.2GB of memory or some other special need. I didn't bother with vlite - it's not as if I'm anywhere near short of space.

Then install the drivers - grab the chipset and video drivers from the Intel site, and the rest from the XP downloads at Asus (leaving out the Asus function key stuff - it doesn't like the audio driver or video driver on Vista, not yet anyway).

And the result? It all works wonderfully well - very smooth in fact - and very welcome for a die-hard XP luddite like me who has come to appreciate the charms of Vista after a year of struggling with it :-)

For comparison purposes, The Windows Experience Index figures on my Eee 1000H are now:

- Processor: 3.0
- Memory: 4.4
- Desktop Graphics: 4.1
- Gaming Graphics: 2.7
- Primary HDD: 5.4

- all very reasonable. For comparison purposes, a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo Dell Vostro 1510 with 3GB of RAM, 250GB HDD and built-in Intel graphics returns 4.8, 4.8, 3.4, 3.5 and 5.1.

All things considered, an Eee 1000H with 2GB of RAM runs Vista very acceptably, and is utterly portable in comparison to full-size laptops.

I hope this is helpful to others considering these machines.

P.S. I chose the Eee 1000H over the wind because:

- it can take a 2.5" drive (the Wind HDD really is 1.8" I believe);
- it comes with a six-cell battery included (for the same price as a Wind with 3-cells);
- it has a better trackpad;
- it's the 3rd generation of Eee in coamparison to the Wind 1.0...

Wind, Schmind - no wonder you're suffering with Wind trying to stuff Vista down a 1GB gullet!

I got an eee 1000H from ebuyer.com last Friday, along with a 2GB S... more

667theneighbour said on 7th August 2008

The Wind uses a 2,5" HDD. :-)

xbrumster said on 22nd September 2008

God almighty love you guys! almost in a sexual way...
this article is certainly intriguing, though hopelessly. But definitely encourages me to try something naughty with my ... more

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