How to Install Windows 7 Beta on an Acer Aspire One Netbook

How do you install an Operating System onto a laptop with no optical drive? The answer is you need a bootable USB drive. It took a lot of searching around the net to work out how to do this, so I thought I’d outline the steps here, mainly for my own benefit, so I know where to look the next time LOL. This guide will show you how to get Windows vista support Acer Aspire One laptop, YMMV with other laptop.

Step 1 – Let’s create a bootable USD Drive!
1. Clearly, the first thing you need is a USB drive and the one I used was an 8GB Seagate model.
2. Plug the drive into your PC.
3. Open a command prompt as administrator.
4. Get the drive number by typing:
diskpart
list disk
On my machine the USB disk was number 1.
5. Format the drive by typing:
select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=NTFS
assign
exit
6. Mount the Windows 7 beta iso using Daemon Tools or similar.
7. Navigate to the boot directory
cd E:\boot
8. Using bootsect, we’ll make the USB drive a bootable NTFS drive, ready for a Windows 7 image (my drive was labeled G):
bootsect /nt60 G:
9. We are finished with the command prompt now, so you can close it.

Step 2 – Copy the installation files from the mounted Windows 7 iso to the USB drive.

Step 3 – Install on the Netbook
1. Plug in the USB drive and turn on the netbook
2. On start up press to select the bootable drive
3. Select the USB drive and press return
4. The netbook will boot from the USB drive and the installation will begin
5. Install as normal.
I hope this helps someone, and if not, at least I’ll know where to look the next time I need this information.

Disable useless Vista Features

If you installed Vista operating system of Microsoft yourself and have problem in installing previous Windows Operating System, you surely noliced that Vista hardly asks any questions about your computer—and what you plan to do with it—than did prior Operating System.

Windows Vista makes all kinds of assumptions about your computing habits and the features you may or may not need, and it inevitably installs some overhead that you simply don't need. You can get rid of it. Windows XP had the Add/Remove Windows Features button in the Control Panel Add/Remove Programs applet, and Vista has something like it.

1. Open Control Panel and click Uninstall a Program to launch Vista's Uninstall or Change a Program Window. In the Tasks pane on the left, click Turn Windows Features On or Off.
2. Check the list of features. Each feature is preceded by a checkbox which, if filled, indicates the feature is installed. If you hover the mouse over a feature, a help tooltip appears to tell you what it is.

3. Uncheck any feature you don't need. Some of the features are headings with a sub-list below them; just click the little + sign to expand.
For my gaming system, I've purged everything except:
• Some of the games
• XPS Viewer (under .NET Framework 3.0)
• Remote Differential Compression (a network optimizer)
• Windows Ultimate Extras
Note that when you uncheck features, you're not removing these features from your system; you're simply turning them off so they don't sit in the background eating up resources. You can turn any of them back on by invoking this window and filling the checkboxes.

Source:
http://vistahelp.blogspot.com/

How to Make older programs run in Windows XP in Compatibility Mode

Installing any software or application program in Windows XP or Windows Vista can be a major issue. There can be several reasons for this, for example drivers might not be compatible with the operating system or anything as such. But the most common reason for such issue is the compatibility issue. For example you have attached a web cam to your computer having Windows XP, and you try to install the drivers for that Web Cam, but you are not able to install that drivers for the same reason of compatibility issue.

The Compatibility mode of Windows XP does that for us, Windows XP support compatibility mode “Runs the program using settings from a previous version of Windows”. Try this setting if you know the program is designed for (or worked in) a specific previous version of Windows.

Run the Program Compatibility Wizard

We should run the Program Compatibility Wizard before you try other ways of updating your programs or drivers because it identifies compatibility fixes written specifically for Windows XP. If the wizard does not solve your problem, you can try other steps listed at the end of this article.
To run the Program Compatibility Wizard:
1. Click Start, and then click Help and Support (online computer support).
2. Click Fixing a problem, and then click Application and software problems.
3. Under Fix a problem click Getting older programs to run on Windows XP.
4. Read the instructions and then click the Program Compatibility Wizard.

Set Compatibility Properties Manually

As an alternative to running the program compatibility wizard, you can set the compatibility properties for a program manually
To set the compatibility properties for a program manually:
1. Right-click the program icon on your desktop or the shortcut on the Start menu for the program you want to run, and then click Properties.
2. Click the Compatibility tab, and change the compatibility settings for your program.

After selecting the proper OS is the compatibility mode we need to reset the three fields under “Display Settings” if an older program requires 640×480 resolution or 256 colors.
Click Apply.

Source:
http://www.articlesbase.com/computers-articles/how-to-make-older-programs-run-in-windows-xp-in-compatibility-mode-937915.html