When My Mini 9 Arrives, I Plan to…

mechanicIn anticipation of my Dell Mini 9 arriving sometime next week, I’m making my plans to replace the WinXP OS with Windows 7. Here’s what I have so far:

  1. Make sure the Mini 9 BIOS is the latest (A04). If it is not, download the update from the Dell support site and install it.
  2. Install the 2 GB RAM module in the Mini 9.
  3. Make a backup image of the original WinXP installation using Clonezilla.
    • Boot up the Mini 9 using a USB Flash Drive that is bootable with the Clonezilla software
    • Save the disk image file from Clonezilla to a 2nd USB Flash Drive (8 GB of free space)
  4. Re-boot the Mini 9 using a 4 GB Fash Drive that has the Windows 7 Install files, and install the Win7 OS.
  5. Install the Win7 Drivers as described in the DellMini Forum posting.
  6. Apply all the tweaks I’ve been reading about to speed up the system performance.

I’m doing this because I want to test out Windows 7, since I’ve read that it runs pretty good on the Dell Mini 9. If I have too many issues with it, my plan is to install a nLite version of WinXP back on the system.

I’ve also got a 16 GB SDHC card ordered from Newegg.com and on the way, so that should give me more storage for applications and files.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Backups, General, Hardware, Upgrades, WinXP, Windows 7, nLite. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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