How to Install Windows XP on the Asus Eee PC
If you’ve been lucky enough to get your hands on a Asus Eee PC I’m sure you have already thought about other tasty operating system you can run off it. While internal storage is limited the unit comes with a SD Card which can now be picked up cheaply from companies like SanDisk. These can be used to run various Linux flavors but what about good old Windows XP? For those of us Redmond zombies don’t worry, this unit runs Windows surprisenly well. So well in fact they even include some basic instructions in manual itself, for those wanting a little more information this is how I did it:
Supplies Need:
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About 1 Hour
Your first challenge of course is to install via CD on a system without a CD player. If you have an external USB CDROM this will make the process a little easier, those without are going to need a few supplies. You can yank an IDE or SATA CDROM from just about any home computer for this. The only piece of hardware you’ll need to buy is the IDE/SATA to USB 2.0 Adapter which runs about $25US. This great little unit allows you to plug in any CD or HDD drive and have it act like a USB drive. Install the unit as you see below:
The large connection goes where the IDE cable would normally go and connects to the Asus Eee PC directly via USB. The power cable supplies the drive with juice and has an On\Off switch directly on the cable (don’t forget to switch on). Jumper settings on the drive don’t seem to matter since there is only one drive to deal with. Mine was set to Master and the drive was detected correctly.
Insert your bootable Windows XP CDROM and you’re ready to start the install.
The Install Process:
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Turn on the unit and press F2 during boot up.
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Arrow over to the “Advanced” Tab
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Go to “OS Installation” setting and change to “Start” (After the Windows install remember to come back and set this to “finished”)
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Arrow over to the “Boot” Tab and set your 1st boot device to the new CDROM. This may be listed ATAPI CDROM depending on your drive.
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Hit F10 to save your changes and reboot, look out for the “press any key to enter install” text.
The rest of the Windows XP install is pretty standard. When you get to the “where to install” part you’ll want to delete all existing partitions and create 1 with all the available space. Format this drive in NTFS format using the “Quick” option for a faster install. Advance through the screens until your install is done, this part takes about 30 minutes.
Installing Drivers:
It was really nice of Asus to include a Windows XP driver disk in the package even though it ships with a Linux OS. After the install is complete simply insert this CDROM and run the “Install All” option to setup the devices. The machine will reboot a few times and when its done you should have everything accounted for in the Device Manager. If your web cam is not working its because you used a Pre-SP2 install of Windows XP. To correct the issue simply apply the Service Pack 2 and after reboot it should find the camera.
Installing Programs:
Since the Asus only comes with a 4GB HDD you aren’t going to have a lot of room after installing Windows XP. This is where the 4GB SD card comes in, toss this in to instantly double your storage space. When installing applications be sure to install them to this drive (Drive E:) and not to the internal hard drive. This should leave you enough room to install just about any of your favorite programs.
Moving My Documents:
Once again due to your limited storage space internally you’ll want to move the My Documents folder to the SD card as well. To do this right click the My Documents folder and select “Properties”. Click the “Move” button to relocate this folder to the E drive. Now when you save files or photos they will default to this SD card as well.
Upgrading the Memory:
My memory is still on order from Amazon so I’ll have to update this part later. The memory install is similar to other laptops, there is small panel in the bottom that needs be unscrewed and wedged off. Here you’ll find the current 512MB that can be replaced with a 1GB or more stick. Please note this of course voids your warranty but what fun are those anyway. This is optional but is recommended for using this device with Windows XP.
Impressions So Far:
Everything works great! Actually I’m shocked how well certain apps run off this thing. Even some games like Second Life work great after installing Direct X 10. Response time is quick, can I get solid state hard drives in…well…everything? Before doing a major cleanup I still have 1GB remaining internally and tons of space on my SD card. The only negative so far is the screen resolution of 800×600, while most web sites look fine some apps have issues here. Would love to see a higher resolution version and perhaps a slightly larger monitor. My wife keeps asking to borrow it for coach surfing so it must be a hit. 
Problems, experiences or advice for installing Windows XP on the Asus Eee PC? Please leave your comments below.
December 12th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Dear Webmaster,
I would like to add one more important thing to your installation process of XP on the EEE PC, which i faced during my install. It is mandatory to DELETE “ALL” THE PARTITIONS.. and install on a single partition otherwise windows will not load into the (GUI based SETUP) part of the XP installation process. It just troubles you saying OS not found.
Regards,
All V
December 17th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Tried your install, but got a BSOD with Stop: 0×0000007e. Tried to contatc ASUS and got the “ASUS does not condone tampering with the operating system, so do so at your own risk” even though it is in the manual. Any help wopuld be appreciated.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:58 am
Everyone and their mother knows how to install windows XP using a cdrom drive.
http://www.eeeguides.com has some useful guides.
March 17th, 2008 at 2:26 am
“Please note this of course voids your warranty but what fun are those anyway. ”
Soon after this was written, ASUS said it won’t void the warranty.
April 21st, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Nice tut. But I used nLite to get xp smaller. But yeah…even my lil brother can install xp. But nice and easy tutorial. It just takes forever installing drivers. lol
May 6th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Ok, but…
I have Asus eee PC 4G, External USB2 HDD Seagate
And my question is HOW I Install Windows XP on EXERNAL USB HDD.
I expect some simple way.
I install XP from USB DWD directly to usb HDD, and after first restart on blue screen “a problem has been detected …”
Some ideas ?
June 28th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
A small tip.
When naming the SDHC card under Disk Management it pays to advance it to at least G or higher.
Plugging in a U3 thumb drive will take up 2 drive letters and if (as I did) you have named you SDHC drive D it will bounce it to F and disrupt all the links – eg My Documents moved to D Drive.
July 15th, 2008 at 6:54 am
I’ve got a Asus EEE 900. And it driving me crazy to get XP installed
I’m pretty experienced with computers but i can’t get it to work
I tried different windows versions.
It boots fine from the external drive.
Then it starts loading the windows installer. Looks fine
suddenly blue screen with the message
UNMOUNTABLE BOOT DEVICE
Can anyone help me with this issue. It’s driving me nuts!!
Thanks
July 21st, 2008 at 1:35 pm
good day! I’m using a 2GB ASUS EEE PC, & i have an external CD Rom. i have a problem with the windows XP installation. when i tried installing it, it displayed ” Line 1 of the INF file \i386\txtsetup.sif is invalid. setup cannot continue. press any key to exit ” after setup inspects the system. Help please. thanks
September 10th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Hello there. I’ve followed:
“Turn on the unit and press F2 during boot up.
Arrow over to the “Advanced” Tab
Go to “OS Installation” setting and change to “Start” (After the Windows install remember to come back and set this to “finished”)
Arrow over to the “Boot” Tab and set your 1st boot device to the new CDROM. This may be listed ATAPI CDROM depending on your drive.
Hit F10 to save your changes and reboot”
But when I reboot it just reloads Linux. Why won’t it go onto the install menu?? (I’m using the eee 4G)
September 13th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
hey jp, im having the same problem. if you found a solution, please let me know. thanks.
September 19th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Hello. Can anybody put an image of windows for SDHC ? because all of us use the same hardware, we can put on internet image for 701, 901.
Thank’s.
October 8th, 2008 at 2:09 am
pls help meh! i just bought eee pc and i want to install windows xp. i went to boot setup and tried to locate os installation..but when im in advance tab already theres no OS INSTALLATION TAb… wen i press esc it says reboot and select proper boot device. i dont know what to do,,
October 18th, 2008 at 6:26 am
sharon and jp i made it…………
“Turn on the unit and press F2 during boot up.
Arrow over to the “Advanced” Tab
Go to “OS Installation” setting and change to “Start” (After the Windows install remember to come back and set this to “finished”)
Arrow over to the “Boot” Tab and set your 1st boot device to the new CDROM. This may be listed ATAPI CDROM depending on your drive.
Hit F10 to save your changes and reboot”
after that hit esc button….then choose the usb atapi cd rom device..
But when I reboot it just reloads Linux. Why won’t it go onto the install menu?? (I’m using the eee 4G)
October 18th, 2008 at 6:27 am
sharon and jp i made it…………
“Turn on the unit and press F2 during boot up.
Arrow over to the “Advanced” Tab
Go to “OS Installation” setting and change to “Start” (After the Windows install remember to come back and set this to “finished”)
Arrow over to the “Boot” Tab and set your 1st boot device to the new CDROM. This may be listed ATAPI CDROM depending on your drive.
Hit F10 to save your changes and reboot”
after that hit esc button….then choose the usb atapi cd rom device..
November 4th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Can you leave Linux on the system as it is and install Windows XP on a SD card and have the option to boot either OS????
Now that would rock….
Any ideas?
November 10th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Hello everyone,
i’ve encoutered a problem during the install of windows xp on eeepc 900HA, because after i’ve selected the partition where to installl the operating system i saw that the bios is on a partition of 8MB size which has the drive letter C:, so everytime my xp asks for restart it can not find ntldr. any ideeas on that? can i delete the drive C: or can i change the drive letter.
thank you for your help.
have a nice day
November 10th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
i solved it, you can delete the partition because it can be recreated with the recovery cd.
have a nice day….
November 21st, 2008 at 9:41 pm
When you are in the bios on the eee900 and you have selected “start” you can find the ssd storage drives and swap the drives over, so that the 2nd ” 15gb drive is ob ssd (”c” drive)This automatically changes drive 1 the 4gb to ssd (the slave). now when you load windows xp from the USB boot disk it goes on the 15gb drive. when its loaded and you go to my computer and right click then go to properties you will see that the “c” drive is 15 gb. you will need to go to control panel/ administrative tools /computer manager/device manager /disc drives/ and format the 4gb drive this will then reset as the “d” drive.
This can be done because the solid state drives SSD’s are not set up using jumpers as slaves and masters in the same way as conventional hard drives.
Making this switch over gives you plenty of room for the full xp package the SP 3 update full anti virus soft ware and anything else you might want to add, the 4gb “D” drive is still plenty big enough to store files on until you can dounload onto disc or flash drive for storing elseware.this is after all a notebook not a pc.The xp version of this notebook has just the one 12gb drive and now you know why.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:02 am
I have installed a nlite xp pro on my 900 EEE and it works very well except I can’t get the Wifi to work. I have installed the drivers from the Asus CD. The blue light is on and I have tried everything. Has anyone any ideas or tutorials I can try.
BTW, could I solve this with a Wireless Dongle.
Please help me with this as everything else went really well. Thanks
November 27th, 2008 at 2:46 am
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December 8th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
[Go to “OS Installation” setting and change to “Start” (After the Windows install remember to come back and set this to “finished”)]
My problem: In my BIOS “Advanced” tab it lists: 1.HDD configuration, 2.Onboard Devices Configuration, 3.CPU configuration, but no “OS Installation.” I am running a 901 Linux Eee. I have encountered this same problem with most tutorials I have come across.
December 26th, 2008 at 6:24 am
If any of you have a BSOD when installing windows xp make sure the sd / sdhc is not in the card reader, seems that when the sd card is inserted, at the time of disk selection and partitioning it will bring this BSOD. I had that problem and solved it taking the sd card out.
Hope this helps someone.
January 9th, 2009 at 12:02 am
Hi, I installed the first part as per the instruction above, but when the computer restarts and windows starts up, the computer wont find the portable cd with the xp disc in it to finish the installation process. I have tried changing the port in the boot tab but it does seem to make any difference
February 8th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
I usually dont post in Blogs but your blog forced me to, amazing work.. beautiful
March 8th, 2009 at 8:37 am
hi, every time i’m trying to install windows xp on asus Eee 900 , bleu screen appear…. anybody can help..thanks zag
March 11th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Your instructions were most helpful, thank you very much.
April 7th, 2009 at 10:33 am
i also get “Blue Screen of Death” when trying to install XP, i believe it has something to do with the partitions, but i get the blue screen before the installer will let me delete(format) the drives for the windows install, i use an external USB CD drive and have an 8Gb Flash drive, and just CANT get XP to install no matter what i try
April 17th, 2009 at 12:15 am
I usually do not comment on blog posts but I found this quite interesting, so here goes. Thanks! Regards, P.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:54 am
eee pc 900 i kept getting missing ntldr. I deleted all partitions and removed the sd blank form the reader and it worked.good luck all.
April 27th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Hey very nice blog!! Man .. Beautiful .. Amazing .. I will bookmark your blog and take the feeds also…
May 28th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
Hi, now my eee pc is looking for a boot disk? Why?
May 31st, 2009 at 12:41 pm
i am trying to install Xp on my eee pc900.. following all the instructions and it all seems to go ok, windows set up begins and starts installation through the blue setup screen then suddenly stops with an error message saying installation has stopped to prevent damage please restart… and it keeps happening. any ideas?
August 8th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
I have the same problem as two others: I have no”OS Installation” option to change under the Advanced tab.
September 13th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Thank you for this website. I finished installing XP in my eee 900.
After installing, looks like it always need the thumbdrive (USB)inorder for XP to load.
Is this true? (Always need the boot from USB inorder to bring up XP)?
Please help!! Thanks you so much!!
November 6th, 2009 at 2:16 am
Just grabbed the feed… thanks for posting this.