Very Slow Windows 7 Installation

Image via Cheeseburger network

A friend of mine wanted to set up a new PC. She chose some parts, she decided what to keep from her old rig and we got to assembling her machine. Everything went as expected, so we came to the part where we would install Windows 7.

To our terror, the installation process was slower than a senile turtle with chopped off legs (she was a bit more frightened than me because she had paid for all that stuff).

Google is our friend though and blah blah, I did a quick search and I found this extremely useful post.

So basically, what you need to do if you are experiencing the same situation (don’t worry, you will know), just go to the BIOS screen, and disable the floppy drive.  Note that in our case there was no floppy drive present and probably that’s what causing the problem.

I have absolutely no idea how Microsoft let this one get away. I mean what did they do when testing Windows? They disabled the floppy to begin with?

But anyway, if you find your installation to be painfully slow, give this a try. If it doesn’t fix things, well, how can I put it subtly? You’re screwed…

Asus eeePC 900 – Bios Update.

Today’s post, is a bit technical I’m afraid. I have to apologise if some of you find it boring, but I think it is a useful piece of info that might help some people.

The story: I have an ASUS eee PC 900, which I bought with windows XP. I worked just fine, save from the short battery life. It supposed to last about 2 hrs, but in my case it lasted no more than an hour with the wlan turned on. While searching through forums, asking around and taking wild guesses, I decided to install linux on it, since it was supposed to treat batteries better. On a whim, I decided to go with SuSe, since I had seen it at a colleague’s computer and it looked nice.

The problem: After I had installed SuSe, I learned that the latest BIOS update, could help with my battery problem. I should say though that SuSe helped a lot, but I had to try that too. Asus supplies tools to perform the update through Windows and Xandros (the Linux that comes with eeePC) but offers little or no help with other OSes. Reading through forums, where everybody suggested all sorts of things, I reached…

The solution: You need a USB stick formatted as FAT16. FAT32 did not work! Then you will have to download the ROM file from ASUS website and rename it to something like 900.ROM (if your model is eeePC 1000, that would be 1000.ROM). Copy the ROM file to the USB stick, plug it in and restart your eeePC. While at the BIOS screen, press ALT and F2 simultaneously. This loads the built in updater. If all goes well, it should detect the USB stick, read the ROM file and start the update procedure. It didn’t take a long time, just a couple of minutes. Then, it will prompt you to restart the machine, and everything will be fine. Remember to re-enable some devices that will be turned off by the new BIOS.

PS: Needless to say that, updating the BIOS could result in damaging your machine, if something goes wrong…