Posted 05 May 2009 — by cypress Category News, Technology
The next pre-release of the eagerly awaited Windows 7 is now out. It can be obtained through the Microsoft website (http://bit.ly/Ovq8H). If you are interested in upgrading from build 7000 I would advise that you hurry up and download it before they decide to limit the number of downloads.
A quick word of warning to those who followed my triple boot tutorial: reinstalling Windows 7 is most likely going to overwrite your MBR and remove Grub which means you won’t be able to boot into Ubuntu or OS X. There should be directions online on how to reinstall grub. I will update the post later with a link to such a tutorial.
*UPDATE* As promised, here is a tutorial from Fosswire which walks you through rebuilding your GRUB bootloader after installing Windows 7.
Today in class my professor asked if anyone was able to access the Internet and I was on, everything working fine. He made me go onto a website and pull up a movie which he wanted to show during his lecture. I got the video alright and waited for him. When it came time, he requested my computer. I was unsure if my EEE PC would work with the classroom’s projector as I had never tried the VGA port. I also was not sure if Windows 7 would work with it.
To my great surprise, it all went flawless. As soon as I plugged in the VGA cable, my screen blinked, and a few seconds later my screen was on and the projector was projecting the image without any hesitation, dialog boxes, or other issues. It was nice to see everything simply work, without issues.
I wonder how the machine determined the correct resolution for the projector (as that has been an issue with other people’s computers). I also wonder if there are settings that can be changed so the projector is not in mirror mode.
Anyway, I thought I would share my pleasant experience with Windows 7 on my EEEPC.
Burn Windows 7 beta to the dvd drive. Start the eeePC and tell it to boot from the external DVD drive. Decide where you want to install Windows 7. I suggest that you chose a blank partition or that you format the one that you want to install to since this is a beta and funny things might happen. Make sure your data is backed up before attempting to install. You can get a product key by following the steps outlined by this LifeHacker article.
Once Windows 7 is installed, please download any updates available for it. The 7000 release, which is the one shipped as Windows 7 beta has a mp3 corruption bug. You can read about it on Ars Technica. The fix is available on Microsoft’s site in Knowledge Base Article 961367
Out of the box, the install does not have drivers for the LAN or WiFi. What you will need to do is download the Ralink Wireless LAN drivers from Ralink. You will also want to download the ACPI drivers so that your function buttons work. You can download the driver from here. Run the .msi file to install the drivers.
The installation of eeeXubuntu will be slightly more difficult as it will require us to manually partition the hard drive.
Follow the video directions for partitioning. An article detailing the complete process of partitioning will be coming out soon.