1. Installed Windows XP SP2
- This image has only IE and Windows XP, nothing more. No themes, no nothing . You can make your own copy with your original Windows XP SP2 CD and nLite.

2. Installed drivers the manual way.
- I don’t like installers: leave garbage of logs and programs that i’ll never use (like Realtek manager, just waste memory and an icon in the taskbar). The only drivers I used with an installer were the sound (you MUST use the installer) and the chipset.

3. Install XPize
- This wonderful utility will change a lot of icons, including the theme and the startup screen. It looks gorgeous!
http://www.xpize.net/

4. Shutdown time
- To reduce the shutdown time, we need to modify a registry file. Open regedit and go to this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/ SYSTEM/ CurrentControlSet/ Control
When you left click the CONTROL folder, settings will appear on your right. Edit “WaitToKillServiceTimeout” to 5000, that’s a good setting. Reboot and the settings works.

5. Remove the pagefile
-This is for the normal wearing of the drive in the EEE. (Thanks to Qatz!)
Open regedit and search for this string:
“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PagingFiles”
Double click it and delete everything inside of “Value Data:”
Reboot your system and manually delete “C:\pagefile.sys”.
Delete the pagefile, how? On the explorer, click in Tools, then Folder Options, then View, select Show hidden folders and files” and uncheck “Hide operating system files (recomended)”. Now you can delete the file.
In my opinion, ill suggest to use from 250 to 500mb in pagefile, im trying that and i want to test if everything is ok

6. Move My documents
- Right click on My Documents, then properties, then MOVE, select a folder in your SD card, and you’re ready.

7. CCleaner
- This program eliminates all temp files, including web pages, etc, all in 2 clicks, Right click on the Recycle bin, and a left click “Run CCleaner”.
www.ccleaner.com

8. 7-zip
- Like WinRAR, but light-weight and open source!
www.7-zip.org

9. ASUS ACPI
- This program is to control the volume and WiFi under Windows. Install it

10. FoxIt PDF Reader
- PDF Reader, just like Adobe. It’s free, and light-weight.
www.foxitsoftware.com

11. Remove unwanted apps running at startup
- Run “msconfig”, then go to “Start”, then deselect ALCMTR, reader_sl (if you use Adobe Reader), AsTray (a tray from Asus, don’t know it’s function), RTHDCPL, and SkyTel.

12. Use Tim’ Freeware Power Center
- Small utility to show the battery status on a nice little bar
www.northro.com/pw.7z

13. Auto hide tray icons
- Right click on the start bar, then properties. Check “Hide inactive icons” then go to customize. Ill recomend hide everything except MSN Messenger and wireless.

14. Activate cache in your SD card.
- I dont know if actually works, but I did it. Go to My PC, then select the SD Card and right click, then properties. Then go to hardware, select “USB 2.0 Card Reader” , then properties. Select directives, and check “Optimize for performance”.

15. Reflash your bios.
- If you got the original 0204, I suggest you reflash it to 0204, but of this link. It will activate USB 2.0 and the webcam will work on Skype and Messenger.
http://rapidshare.com/files/67739813/701-ASUS-0204.zip
or
www.northro.com/701-ASUS-0204.zip

Hope you like my little tweak guide!

Any suggestions, are welcome

UPDATE 1:

16. Orchesta Sound Scheme
- I love the sound of this theme, try it yourself!
(Ill upload it on the night).

UPDATE 2:
Download the Intel video drivers instead of using the ASUS one!
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_ … p;lang=eng

UPDATE 3:
New mirror for the bios

The Asus Eee comes with a dormant window manager called IceWM. (A window manager is a graphical user interface that controls placement and appearance of windows within an operating system). By simply editing a text file, one can gain access to a world of window and taskbar settings, and can also enable a Start Menu. This document will focus primarily on activating the Start Menu, but later on we will add how-to’s for other settings.

Enabling the IceWM Start Menu in Easy Mode

_{It would be great if someone could assist me with a redirect from the old version of this page to this version. I believe this site has a necessary plugin and further details.}

Copying and editing preferences file in Terminal

This will involve creating a folder in your /home/user directory and copying an existing preferences text file over to that new directory. This preferences file contains many, many interesting settings but for now we will simply focus on enabling the Start Menu.

1. Open your Terminal using the keyboard combination Ctrl-Alt-T.

2.1) Type the following commands, as shown in the screenshot below.

/home/user> mkdir ~/.icewm
/home/user> cp /etc/X11/icewm/preferences /home/user/.icewm

3. Now, from here you can simply edit the file and be done with it if you happen to know how, but if you are new to using the command line you might wish to verify that the file was actually copied. Then, assuming you navigate to the new directory first as shown below, you would enter the command nano preferences.

/home/user> cd .icewm
/home/user> ls
/home/user> nano preferences

4. Now you should be looking at your newly copied IceWM preferences file in Nano.

5. Using the cursor key, navigate to the following line and change the zero to a 1 as shown below.

6. Now you can hit the Ctrl-X key combination, press “Y” to save, then press <enter> to save the name as ‘preferences’.

7. That’s it! Now you can press the key combination Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to restart X (restarting your Eee is unnecessary) and you will see a Start Menu.

Copying and editing preferences file in File Manager

1. Open the Work Tab

2. Open File Manager

3. Click “View”, “Show Hidden Files”

4. Click “View, “Show All File Systems”

5. In the left-hand pane, click “My Home” and create a hidden folder entitled .icewm

6. In the left-hand pane, navigate from “All File Systems” to /etc/X11/icewm

7. In the right-hand pane, click Ctrl-A to select all files

8. Click Ctrl-C to copy to the clipboard

9. In the left-hand pane, select My Home, .icewm and click Ctrl-V to paste from the clipboard

10. Right click on the file named “preferences” and choose “Open With…” → Text Editor.

11. Find the line “TaskBarShowStartMenu”, change the value from 0 to 1.

12. Save the file and press the key-combination Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to restart X (restarting your Eee is unnecessary).

Changing the time format to AM/PM

1. In the same preferences file discussed above, scroll down to the section titled “Clock Time Format” and look at the TimeFormat value as shown below.

2. Change the TimeFormat to read as follows

TimeFormat="%I:%M %p"

3. Now save your changes and restart X (or restart your Eee if you wish).

_{This article is under development.}

Setting Up a More Useful Start Menu

File to edit is menu in /home/user/.icewm

# - anything after # in the line is comment

prog - is what will appear in your menu

separator - is line between groups

menu - group folder

restart - Restarting another window manager

menufile - special entry which house the shortcut names you placed in the toolbar

menuprog - ?

Some sample program entry :

format : prog “title” icon_name program_executable options

Games

prog "Potato Guy" ktuberling ktuberling -caption "Potato Guy"

Utility

prog "Control Panel" konqueror konqueror
prog "File Manager" Icon XandrosFileManager
prog "File Manager (Root)" Icon kdesu "XandrosFileManager --caption 'File Manager (ROOT)' --icon xfm_root"
prog "Text Editor" kwrite kwrite
prog "Screen Shot" ksnapshot ksnapshot
prog "Remote Desktop" krdc krdc
prog "Synaptic Package" synaptic kdesu synaptic

Before doing this, remove any repositories you may have added. You ONLY want to use the packages from the Asus update repositories. To do this: ctrl-alt-T, sudo kwrite /etc/apt/source.list. Put ‘#’ (no quotes) in front of any repositories other than the Asus ones. Save and close. Then, sudo apt-get update.

Enabling to full desktop mode (KDE)

This method will get you the components needed for the ‘full desktop’, which is the K Desktop Environment (KDE). You must be connected to the internet before doing this.

1. Open a console window (CTRL-ALT-T).

2. Type the following to install ksmserver and kicker, the two programs we need (answer Y if it asks you if you’re sure you want to install anything):

3. sudo bash

4. apt-get update

5. apt-get install ksmserver kicker

6. Restart (should go to Easy Mode)

NB: Now you need to choose either ” Simple Way” or “Boot directly” below. You’re not done yet.

Simple way to boot into Advanced Mode

Using this method will result in a sort of “double boot” that will lengthen the startup time by about ten seconds. If you use this method, your desktop icons will disappear at each reboot. In order to maintain them, as well as improving booting speed, you need also to follow the instructions to ” Boot directly into the mode last used“: Easy Mode or Advanced Desktop Mode below.

1. Go to Settings → Personalization

2. Select “Full Desktop Mode” under Login Mode

3. Reboot.

You should now be in full desktop mode.

Other walkthroughs using this method

• downloadsquad

Another simple way to boot into Advanced Mode (no double boot effect)

This way you will directly boot into KDE, with usb and samba shares fully working. All the changes are made in the user directory, so the side effects are reduced, and reversion is simple as an rm -f .xinitrc.

First open a terminal (by hitting Ctrl-Alt-t) and open the .xinitrc file in your home directory with your loved text editor (e.g. nano -w ~/.xinitrc), then paste this in :

.xinitrc:

#Needed to get automount working

xhost + si:localuser:root

sudo rm /tmp/nologin#Needed to get the network working

sudo /opt/xandros/bin/start_netserv &

startkde

Save (Ctrl-O and Y with nano) and reboot.

Boot directly into the mode last used: Easy Mode or Advanced Desktop Mode

This method remembers which mode you were using the next time you start the computer. It also avoids the “double boot” effect. It seems to properly recognize SD cards and USB devices and show the Windows Network in file manager (previously common problems).

WARNING: Incorrectly editing startsimple.sh may result in an “unbootable” system that can only be recovered by either using a Live Linux Distro on a CDRom or Flash drive to restore a copy of startsimple.sh, or by performing a full system recovery (pressing F9 during bootup).

First do Enabling to full desktop mode (KDE)

Replace the text in the existing startsimple.sh file with this one using nano editor or any other one.
Don’t forget to back up the original startsimple.sh file (cp /usr/bin/startsimple.sh /usr/bin/startsimple.sh.bak)
Don’t forget to back up the original startfull.sh file (cp /usr/bin/startfull.sh /usr/bin/startfull.sh.bak)

Edit these by copying the text below, launch a console and type: sudo kwrite /usr/bin/startfull.sh. Paste in the text.

startfull.sh:

#!/bin/shtouch /home/user/.kdesession #changed

killall xinit

startsimple.sh:

#!/bin/shsudo /usr/bin/sessreg -d -l :0.0 -u /var/run/utmp user

xhost + si:localuser:root # Allow local user root only to access the diplay

if [ -f /home/user/.kdesession -a ! -f /home/user/.easysession ]; then #changed

 sudo /usr/bin/sessreg -a -l :0.0 -u /var/run/utmp user

 [ -f /usr/bin/dispwatch ] && /usr/bin/dispwatch &

 for i in /sys/block/s[dr]?/uevent ; do

   sudo /bin/sh -c "echo add > $i"

 done

 (sleep 8; /opt/xandros/bin/start_netserv) & #added

 (sleep 16; /usr/local/bin/asusosd) & #added

 sudo rm -f /tmp/nologin #changed

 exec startkde

else

 sudo /usr/bin/sessreg -a -l :0.0 -u /var/run/utmp user

 if [ -f /home/user/.easysession ]; then

  # we are switching from full to easy mode

  sudo rm -f /home/user/.kdesession #added

  for i in /sys/block/s[dr]?/uevent ; do

   sudo /bin/sh -c "echo add > $i"

  done

 fi

 /opt/xandros/bin/AsusLauncher &

 icewmtray &

 [ -n "$XIM_PROGRAM" ] && $XIM_PROGRAM &

 powermonitor &

 minimixer &

 networkmonitor ath0 eth0 &

 wapmonitor &

 (sleep 3; /usr/bin/keyboardstatus) &

 (sleep 8; /opt/xandros/bin/start_netserv) &

 (sleep 16; /usr/local/bin/asusosd) &

 sudo rm /tmp/nologin

 [ -f /usr/bin/dispwatch ] && /usr/bin/dispwatch &

 exec icewm

fi

Notes

Startsimple.sh is called every time the OS loads. Xinit is a symbolic link to startsimple.sh.
Startfull.sh is called by the easy mode shutdown dialog when the user clicks the Full Desktop button.
/opt/xandros/bin/start_netserv is required for the Windows Network to be accessible in the File Manager.

Source: http://wiki.eeeuser.com

What you’ll need:

- An Eee PC, completely unmodified (4GB version, 512MB RAM)
- A SDCARD (you’ll need this, 2GB minimum, the bigger the better. I’m using 8GB, which are nice and cheap now)
- A Vista DVD
- A 1GB USB stick

Here’s what I did!

- Download vLite from http://www.vlite.net/, and use to create a custom ISO with bits of Vista removed you don’t need, the edition you want (I used Home Premium), such that it’ll fit on your USB stick.
- Format USB stick with a single FAT32 partition, and set active. I did it in Vista, with the following commands from a command prompt (with admin rights):

DISKPART
LIST DISK (note the number of your USB DRIVE at this point)
SELECT DISK 1 (or the appropriate number from the command above)
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
SELECT PARTITION 1
ACTIVE
FORMAT FS=32
ASSIGN
EXIT

- Copy contents of your newly created ISO to the stick (you can extract the ISO with Winrar, burn it to CD mount it with Daemon Tools etc. etc.)
- Insert USB stick into Eee
- Turn on Eee, pressing escape at startup to select the USB stick as the boot device
- Install Vista, configuring 1 single 4GB partition.
- You should now have Vista, but chances are there isn’t much space left. Ensure your SD card is in the slot at this point, and showing as drive D:.
- You need to download PendMoves and MoveFile to your machine from http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysintern…/PendMoves.mspx. Put them in \Windows\System32

Right, now the clever stuff. The thing that stops Vista playing ball on the Eee is it’s HUGE side by side directory, \Windows\winsxs. I mean huge… on my machine it was 1.5GB. The real problem is that it’s huge AND very difficult to move. We’re gonna put it on SD however

- Navigate to the \Windows\WinSXS directory, and view the security properties. You need to first give yourself ownership of the directory, and then give yourself full access (i’d use the administrator account to do this stuff).
- Now run a command prompt, and create a dummy directory. Type ‘mkdir c:\windows\winsxs.moved’
- Now that’s done, we’re gonna create a junction (like a Symbolic link for Vista). Type ‘mklink /J c:\windows\winsxs.link winsxs.moved’
- Good, now delete the winsxs.moved directory. Trust me on this one. Type ‘rmdir c:\windows\winsxs.moved’

That’s the preperation done. Now we need to use MoveFile to schedule renaming of the winsxs at reboot.This is the magic that will give us control over that nightmare directory.

- From the command prompt, run ‘movefile c:\windows\winsxs c:\windows\winsxs.moved’. As you can see, this is renaming the winsxs directory before anything can get a hold on it.
- From the command prompt, run ‘movefile c:\windows\winsxs.link c:\windows\winsxs’. This puts a winsxs directory back (as far as the OS is concerned), so everything doesn’t collapse in a heap.
- Now type ‘pendmoves’. It should show the 2 pending moves you’ve entered above, with NO ERRORS. If it all looks good, REBOOT!

On reboot the critical renames / moves will happen, and we’ll be free of the shackles that stopped us messing with that pesky winsxs directory.

- When your PC is booted, again open a command prompt, and ‘dir c:\windows\winsxs*’. If it’s all gone well, you’ll see a winsxs.moved real directory, and the winsxs junction. If it HASN’T worked, repeat the above steps!

If it’s all good, then we’re nearly home and dry. All we need to do is relocate WinSXS and amend the junction.

- Using Windows Explorer, COPY the whole winsxs.moved directory to a \Windows directory on your SD card. As it’s HUGE, it’ll take ages, and is often quicker using a USB card reader than the internal card reader.
- When this has finished, rename the directory on the SD card from winsxs.moved to winsxs. Go to a command prompt (again!) and type ‘rmdir c:\windows\winsxs’. Then, type ‘mklink /J c:\windows\winsxs d:\windows\winsxs’.
- To be sure everything is happy, in explorer browse to c:\windows\winsxs. You should see a ton of files. They’re really on your SD card
- Reboot

After reboot, you should be able to delete c:\windows\winsxs.moved and FINALLY liberate all that disk space. Now you’re at the point where you need to tweak your system. This means reducing / moving the page file, disabling hibernation and so on and so forth. To disable hibernation on Vista, drop to a command prompt and type ‘powercfg -h off’.

There’s one last thing you should do. When you download Windows Updates etc., the files get put into C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution, and this will quickly become huge. I recommend moving this to the SD too. It’s easier though… stop Windows Update service, move directory, create junction, restart service, DONE!

It goes without saying that when you install apps (e.g. i’m gonna put Office 2007 on), you should install them to D:\Program Files - your SD - where appropriate!

Job done, you have Vista on your EEE

Source: http://www.modaco.com/content/Asus-EEE-PC-http-www-EEEasy-com/261965/Installing-Vista-on-the-Eee-ive-done-it-and-it-works/

Please note this tutorial works on all computers not just the Asus EEE PC.
To complete this tutorial you need a 32bit version of Windows XP or Windows Vista installed on your home PC.

What you’ll need:
USB_PREP8 (alternative download)
PeToUSB (alternative download)
Bootsect.exe (alternative download)

Extract the files in Bootsect.zip
The next step is to extract USB_prep8 and PeToUSB.
Next copy the PeToUSB executable into the USB_prep8 folder.
Inside of the USB_prep8 folder double click the executable named usb_prep8.cmd.

The window that opens will look like this:

Press any key to continue

You next window will look like this:
These settings are preconfigured for you all you need to do now is click start.
Once the format is complete DO NOT close the window just leave everything as it is and open a command prompt from your start menu (type cmd in the search bar or run box depending on your version of windows.).

Inside of the command windows go to the directory you have bootsect.exe saved.
(use the cd directoryname command to switch folders)

Now type “bootsect.exe /nt52 R:” NOTE R: is the drive letter for my USB stick if yours is different you need to change it accordingly. What this part does is write the correct boot sector to your USB stick, this allows your PC to boot from the USB stick without it nothing works.
Please note: When running the bootsect.exe command you cannot have any windows open displaying the content of your USB stick, if you have a window open bootsect.exe will be unable to lock the drive and write the bootsector correctly.

If all went well you should see “Bootcode was successfully updated on all targeted volumes.”

Now you can close this command prompt (don’t close the usbprep8 one by mistake) and the petousb window.

You window you see now should look like this:

If it doesn’t try pressing enter.

Now you need to enter the correct information for numbers 1-3.
Press 1 and then enter. A folder browse window will open for you to browse to the location of you XP setup files (aka your cdrom drive with xp cd in)
Press 2 and enter a letter not currently assigned to a drive on your PC
Press 3 and enter the drive letter of your USB stick
Press 4 to start the process.

The script will ask you if its ok to format drive T:. This is just a temp drive the program creates to cache the windows installation files. Press Y then enter.

Once it’s done formating press enter to continue again, you can now see the program copying files to the temp drive it created. Once this is done press enter to continue again.

Next you will see a box pop up asking you to copy the files to USB drive yes/no you want to click yes.

Once the script has completed copy files a popup window asking if you would like to USB drive to be preferred boot drive U: select YES on this window.

Now select yes to unmount the virtual drive.

Ok we are done the hard part, close the usbprep8 window.

Now make sure your EEE pc is configured with USB as the primary boot device.
Insert your USB drive and boot up the EEE.

On the startup menu you have two options, select option number 2 for text mode setup.

From this point on it is just like any other windows XP installation delete/recreate the primary partition on your EEE pc and format it using NTFS.

Once the text mode portion of setup is complete it will boot into the GUI mode (you can press enter after the reboot if your too excited to wait the 30 seconds)

Once the GUI portion of setup is complete you will again have to boot into GUI mode this will complete the XP installation and you will end up at you XP desktop. It is very important that you DO NOT REMOVE THE USB STICK before this point. Once you can see your start menu it is safe to remove the usb stick and reboot your pc to make sure everything worked.

This method has advantages over all current no cdrom methods of installing XP to the EEE. You do not have to copy setup files in DOS to the SSD and install from there. It gives you access to the recovery console by booting into text mode setup, and it gives you the ability to run repair installations of XP if you have problems later on.

I hope this worked out for you and please post feedback to the comments section.