Steps to a happy XP experience

Got my Aspire One running XP OK.

1) Upgrade to 1.5 GByte
2) Install SDHC Class 6 Card
3) Turned off disk indexing
4) Moved Pagefile to SDHC card.
Some people said you can't move it, but it seemed to move.
Ive searched for pagefile.sys on both the SSD and SDHC card and it didn't find the file.
5) Moved IE Cache to SDHC card.

Still hesitates a bit here and there, but it's running way better

Found the SDHC card was the fastest memory by copying a 368 Mb file onto various media.
Got the following results

Copy to Kaser USB Hard Drive : 67 Seconds
Copy to internal SSD : 46 seconds
Copy to Class 2 4GB SDHC In multi card slot : 41 Seconds
Copy to 8GB USB Flash Drive (Kingston Data Traveller) : 39 Seconds
Copy to External USB Hard drive: 23 seconds
Copy to Class 6 SDHC in Storage Media Slot: 22 seconds

Granted these are large file writes, which are better, but it still seems to run better.

 

You have to uncheck "hide protected operating system files" and "show hidden files" on the folder options to see the pagefile.sys .... And its true, you cannot move the pagefile to the SDHC even if windows reports is to be there, it will still use the SSD instead. Cheers.

 

Sorry about delay. Was busy with school work all week



(note: X: is the drive letter i assigned to my sdhc)

I followed the guide from Le Tigre that makes windows recgonize your sd card as a physical hard drive. since the sdhc is now essentially a physical hard drive (not removable) windows let you set pagefile there.

http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=160

 

Hello,

First post! I'm happy that this type of community exists for such a cool little product.

That said, I just got an A150 this week with XP Home, and this thread has helped tremendously. I have two questions, though, that I couldn't find answers to:

What am I giving up by disabling D2D in the BIOS? I do kind of like having the option of restoring the system to factory defaults with just a few clicks, so if turning off D2D disables this option, I'd like to know. Also, I've played around with the D2D setting, and I don't really notice a big difference in performance. What should I expect to notice by disabling D2D?

Thanks for the help.

 

Hi all.

@ Kite: would you mind sharing the driver you created?
I have tried Le Tigre's method but all I managed to do was to make the card-reader disappear from "My Computer".
The weird thing is it's still in the "Device Manager".
Thank god for "Roll back driver".

 

I remembered that my file ended up looking somewhat like this:
http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=160#p1014

Do you know which directory the driver is saved to when you install it? I think i have deleted the file I edited. I will continue to look for the driver if i find it I will post it up

 

Thanks Kite, I've tried again and still no go (card reader disppears from "My Computer").
The cfadisk file should be located in the "WINDOWS/system32/drivers" folder.

 

I found the system file for it. Use it with caution and good luck
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=O8680X5G

Should add that once you get this to work, I dont think you would want to remove your sd card when your machine is on. Guaranteed BSOD if you do.

 

Thanks Kite but still no luck. I give up. :?

 

did you take the card out reboot and then stick it back in? If you do that and the card reader still doesnt come back up i cant help

 

I also had a very happy experience with XP after I finally decided against Linux. my whole sytem (XP-Pro lite version without IE, WMP etc) including all necessary programms takes only about 2,5 GB of SSD space (as against the 5 GB for the Linpus-Installation. and another bonus is the fact that XP uses the additional SD-Card in the extension-slot as drive E: which means that in future I could take that one out and replace at anytime without affecting the system. and the XP runs quite fast on my 512 MB RAM-Version. After installing all programms I defragmented the C-Drive thoroughly, and now the AAO for the first time performs as I had hoped for right from the start.

re: WLAN. It worked without problems with the drivers provided with windows. The only drivers I needed to change was the Video and the audiodriver.

Allto9gether, I am quite relieved. I never really got used to the DOS-like feel I got with Linpus, and finally all programmes are running smoothly and without any glitches.

From this experience I can only recommend anyone having problems with Linpus: return to WWindows. It is easier thann you think.

To load the programme, I used an extrenal DVD-Drive, after I tried for days, to get an USB-stick to boot from my AAO.
It only took me about 90 or more minutes to install, which has to to with the AAO running on SD and not on a physical Harddisk.

Cheers
Christian

 

I don't understand everyone saying that they have XP running smoothly on their AA1's ssd. I did that too, and even upgraded the RAM to 1.5gb yesterday. And it is a nightmare: up to 3mn40s to boot. I installed Windows, antivirus and firewall on C: (ssd), all my portable apps on the sd card (E and they are rather slow, when they start at all. I disabled cache on Firefox, moved it to a 64mb ramdisk for IE7, moved the page file, TMP, TEMP and My Documents folders to E: and have all my files on F:

I've asked for advice before without response. Please help! Like you, I don't want to use Linpus, it is too restrictive...

 

Hi,
may be you shouldn't have installd the programmes on the removable sd-card. I installed all programmes on C and it s more than okay.
From Experience, I'd also like to suggest not so much to play with parameters

cheers
Christian

 

Did you format your ssd as FAT32 or NTFS? many are reporting that NTFS is significantly slower than FAT32 for the ssd. Also I suggest following this guide: http://wiki.eeeuser.com/windowsxp. Its written for the 4g(?) version of the eeepc 700, but all still applies to the aspire one A110s. The following procedure should be noted, as it speed up my system alot:

you may also want to consider tweaking prefetch as well. http://www.intelliadmin.com/blog/2006/09/why-windows-takes-so-long-to-start-up.html

I am just wondering why your apps on the sd card is slow. I have installed programs in my SDHC and they are quite fast, at least when compared to the ones on ssd. Maybe it is a slow card, i dunno, do some benchmarks on it and decide if you would like to invest in a new one. Would be pointless in putting the files to the sd card if it turns out that the card writes/reads slower than the ssd. The 8g ADATA Class 6 and 16g Transcend ones works wonders.

Nightmare to boot? try using standby instead.

As for defragmenting the ssd, im not entirely convinced it will improve performance on it

 

for me defragmenting really improved the performance even though it took quite some time

fomatting should be in FAT32 and not in NTFS on an SSD

cheers
CF

 

kite,

Thank you for the advice, I will try your tips from the eeeuser website and the prefetch tweaking link. However:

-I did format my ssd in FAT32

-the card is a SDHC and the apps on it are portable apps. I only installed portable apps so i could get better response time for Christ's sake! If they work fine on a USB key, why not on a sdhc card?..

-booting (and shutting down) time is such a nightmare! I haven't found anybody on this forum with a booting time as long as mine. Stanby is not the option because it eats up the battery. I did believe that it only used a button battery on the motherboard to keep the info on the RAM, but it actually uses the main battery!

-I did no defrag. Anyone a little informed knows that defragging is a waste of time on a ssd.

any more tips are always welcomed!

 

Hi,

I must respectfully insist on defragmenting and cleaning the registry - I know it doesn't make sense with SSD technology, but I was running the machine before and after doing this and there IS a 200% improvement in performance.

We can often theorize, but true experience proves that these theories are not practical. My AAO runs pretty well now, but I REALLY insist on the importance of these two steps in making it run well, or having it be a hair-pulling device.

Try it... what have you got to lose (other than 19.99USD)? You will see a HUGE gain, promise!

~R.

 

It sounds like you are in NTFS format...?

 

If on NTFS I'd suggest compressing the whole C drive.
EWF and Minlogon are IMHO the best tweaks for the AA0 with SSD/XP.

 

Defragmenting (SSD) after a clean install had shortened boot time in my case too.