[abhijeet080808]

If you are up to it, look here. I have tried this out on my EeePC 1000H and it works.

[jpm]

@JPM whats your take on UBUNTU for NetBook ? Windows XP makes my netbook very slow !

Theres plenty of ubuntu netbook remixes around like this or even smaller minimal netinst disks. But GNOME or KDE is going to be a problem for netbooks methinks. coz gone are the days when linux 'ran faster'. nowadays many mainstream distros are as bloated and resource hungry as windows.

I used to run SUSE 11.1 GNOME on my ancient Turionx64 1.6Ghz,256MB,60GB laptop. Suse ran slow but better than XP. Switched to Puppy after a disk failure corrupted my disk. Man, Am i happy that i changed or what? this ancient dinosaur has begun to fly now. Almost unbelievably so. plays most media formats out of the box, net and basic office stuff just works and that too super fast.

for your needs, do check out puppyforums for im clients of your choice and webcam support.

Anyways, since the download is small (~100MB) and can run as live USB with UNetbootin i suggest you to give it a try even if you do manage to install ubuntu netbook remix.

[vdiatech]

Thanks JPM, with all the reading about LINUX now, I am really impressed.
Having worked for MS for couple of years in Seattle, I already feel like a traitor ! lol

As Puppy is only 100MB, I will check it out. I also need to check various driver compatibility issues.

[ikoneer]

Originally Posted by vdiatech

Pal, no CD or DVD drive here and no onborad or HDD recovery options.!

oops. my bad. i did not realise.

[vivekiny2k]

winpe/bartpe should be able to get you access to ntfs. as far as i know, bartpe can be installed on usb, never tried it though.

[vdiatech]

Originally Posted by vivekiny2k

winpe/bartpe should be able to get you access to ntfs. as far as i know, bartpe can be installed on usb, never tried it though.

I have attempted to try what you have mentioned above. Not as easy as they sound lol. I dont qualify for the difficulty level !

[ph03n!x]

If you are ready to spend about a 1000 bucks, get a DVD-ROM drive and an external DVD casing from Ritchie Street (or a nearby Mercy Electronics), may prove useful in the future too

[vdiatech]

Originally Posted by ph03n!x

If you are ready to spend about a 1000 bucks, get a DVD-ROM drive and an external DVD casing from Ritchie Street (or a nearby Mercy Electronics), may prove useful in the future too

True, thats a solution. I was panning on a simple external cd-rom for 800rs. My self imposed deadline to fix the USB flash drive way expires this evening ( been extended a few times lol ). I will be at Ritchie St tomorrow morning, to get the drive/casing and the chinese N97 look alike lol

[vdiatech]

Originally Posted by abhijeet080808

If you are up to it, look here. I have tried this out on my EeePC 1000H and it works.

Oh! I somehow missed your post. This is my last option now. I wil try it.

Wil update soon.

Thanks

[vjoy3]

My EeePC had a virus attack and since I had evaluated Ubuntu remix by booting via USB, the viral infection was a good excuse to switch over. Ubuntu is already easy to use and since remix is designed keeping in mind the small screen and lower mem/CPU, Ubuntu Remix is good choice any day on XP.
HowTo-
1)Using a tools like Win32DiskImager, create a bootable USB stick - 1GB size is sufficient.
2)On booting, select F2 and config. to boot from USB as primary
3)Continue booting, after complete boot, you will be able to access XP partition and backup ALL the data to external drive.
4)Install Ubuntu.

Vijay

[clevermax]

Originally Posted by SirAlec

^^^
I can give you a solution but its very complex. you will have to put a ntfs partition reader plus chkdsk.exe on a usb. modify autoexec.bat and config.sys etc. etc.

What is the point in modifying the autoexec.bat and system files like config.sys when he is not able to boot to that XP at all? Please enlighten me...

For this kind of scenario, I don't need to do any of these, I simply boot to Ubuntu from a USB memory stick or form a CD if there is a CD drive. It can read all your NTFS or FAT32 drives, even NTFS security permissions doesn't matter. Within few minutes, I can even be online through WLAN or GPRS-Edge over Bluetooth.

There are very light weight USB bootable OS like PuppyOS available in internet (<90MB) which can also be used to boot very easily. It can also read all your NTFS / FAT32 partitions.

[Sn1p3r]

^^ I like @clevermax reply.

Use ubuntu from USB in persistent /non-persistent mode and recover the data.

I have Samsung netbook and if XP fails you have an auto restore option while your system boots. I think there should be a similar option for other netbooks as well.

Also few other options, take an external drive (USB) and have a windows partition on it (change the boot sequence from BIOS) and recover the old system.

Also, instead of CD buy DVD writer, remember all the writers have a life span, you can burn DVDs for backup using this for your VAIO/netbook.

As you are already using it as only Email and IM machine I am sure you have all your data on cloud.

Cheers!

[it_inspector]

Originally Posted by vdiatech

Hi It_inspector, yes its only for net/im (webcam) . I am downloading ubuntu for netbooks. I will also read about Nlite. I really dont need all the extras that come with the XP and hog the limited resources.

Whats your take on Ubuntu ? I will most probaby install either one of them in the morning. Its a shame to see a OEM Windows XP license going waste though..lol

Ubuntu is good but quite bloated and problem with almost all the linux or other OS's is the loads of drivers and built in apps that are not going to be used by a netbook users. nLite addresses this by taking xp cd and then making an iso which will contain only what you want and nothing else and being all the crap there xp will run faster.

I have not tried xp Home, only xp Pro and it works treat. xp installation was around 600mb with all the drivers and everything. Killing the Page drive from HDD and locating it in Ram itself also helps heaps.

Unless your willing to compile ur own distro i suggest go xp nLite option and keep Backtrack4 on a usb disk.

Cheers

[turbodude]

For Windows 7 and above, PowerISO is a good software to make bootable pen drives. Combine it with UltraISO to make ISO image building easier.

However, you still need to use BartPE for WinXP. I tried to write XP ISO to pen drive but it didn't boot. Win7, Win8 and Win 8.1 booted successfully. The same XP ISO boots good if burnt to DVD.