How to get SP3 for Windows XP on the Asus Eee PC 900
Last summer I had the pleasure of dining with Michael Connick and he’s one of the nicest mobile-tech guys you’ll ever meet. That’s why I really felt badly when I saw he was struggling with installing SP3 for Windows XP on his Asus Eee PC 900 last week. A little elbow grease and a long weekend can go a long way as shown by Michael’s latest update on the topic. He’s got SP3 on the box now and he’s detailed the steps, challenges and pitfalls right here.
Why would this even be an issue, you ask? The problem arose because even though the Linux-flavored Asus Eee PC 900 offers a total of 20 GB of SSD storage, it does so with two physical flash drives: one is 4 GB and one is 16 GB. Most folks opt to put the OS on the first (and faster) SSD, which means you’ve only got 4 GB to work with for Windows unless you start tweaking. Michael originally went the standard XP install route (as most folks likely would) and essentially ran out of space on the 4 GB drive. As a result, Windows Update wouldn’t run, and therefore, no SP3 or other Microsoft Updates could be installed.
There are plenty of options and choices to help slim down XP, either by manually removing components or using nLite to build a custom "thin" install. But this situation underscores why we weren’t originally too keen on Asus using the two SSDs as separate drives, not as a single merged drive.
How would a single merged drive help, Kevin? A combined drive would be as slow as its slowest part. There’s no reason for Asus to limit hardware for Linux to meet with the shortcomings of Windows, and even ignoring that, as you said, there are ways to slim down XP.
There is nothing stopping people from just putting XP on the second, larger drive as is, with performance that would be identical to a “combined drive” case.
Very true Ricky; I was looking at this from the perspective of drive capacity management, not drive performance. I’m also trying to see it from the viewpoint of the consumers. Although arguable, I suspect that many “mainstream” folks might buy such a device and not have the smarts to put XP on the second drive or use nLite; that would put them in the position that Michael found himself in. Again, that’s arguable. I’m basing it on netbook projections. If the market expects to move millions of these types of devices, it won’t be all geeks buying them. Even though I’d like to see the world made up of millions of geeks.
Just to make something clear – I didn’t install XP on the C: drive, Asus did. I bought the XP model of the Eee. If I had installed XP myself, I most certainly put it on the D: drive, regardless of performance considerations.
Michael
This is yet another example of where these mini notebooks are missing the mark. Can an average user really go through all these steps? My eeepc came with 20 gigs, 10gigs per partition. Like a dummy, I installed sp3, only to run out of space on the main drive. I started getting a popup every 30 seconds telling me I was short on disk space. It then said I needed 340mb to uninstall. I had 40mb left. I uninstallled all the apps on c drive outside the base OS and then still only had 120mb. So I went out, paid $100 for an external USB dvd to wipe the system. Yeah, these are not for technical lightweights. Intel is now saying these “Netbooks are compact mobile devices for children.” I cant imagine some kid dealing with sp3. Intel Atom is a loser.