Steps to a happy XP experience

[techie]

After installing, removing XP and installing XP again, I thought I'd outline the steps to making XP perform well.

Disable D2D in Bios
Purchase and install extra 1 GB of RAM for 1.5 GB total
NLite an XP Service Pack 3 CD
Gather the Aspire One drivers. Grab the latest Intel Chipset/VGA drivers from the Intel site
Install XP, formatting the SSD to FAT32
Install the drivers
Turn off Paging
Turn off System Restore
Install Firefox 3 and you're set

I haven't disabled prefetch but that's another option....

 

[bb320]

Wifi doesn't seem to work...sigh...

Prefetch does help alot, the disk doesn't write as much.

 

[Sidewinder]

My wifi is down as well, i can't seem to switch on the wifi card.
I push the button across and no green light, like it's dead.

 

[rjtd]

Can somebody post hdtach results when D2D is turned off, in Windows?
And btw, what is D2D?

On Linux the performance is good, and faster than eee701:
/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 1190 MB in 2.00 seconds = 594.57 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 112 MB in 3.08 seconds = 36.31 MB/sec

(eee 701)
/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 568 MB in 2.00 seconds = 283.49 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 86 MB in 3.01 seconds = 28.56 MB/sec

 

[Ariel]

And btw, what is D2D?

D2D is the Acer Disk to Disk Recovery it's used by many acer systems to restore corrupted boot partitions from a special hidden recovery partition.

of course it only works if there is enough space for another partition in the first place

 

[rjtd]

But how does it influence XP speed? :?: :geek:

 

[Ariel]

But how does it influence XP speed? :?: :geek:

Not sure about this one, I would not expect acer to come up with a new BIOS for every version of the one.. rather one version for every system based on the mainboard/chipset .

I'm guessing that maybe the bios looks for a partition on the ssd that doesn't exist.... the question then is.. does disabling the d2d Improve performance in the standard linpus lite as well?

would anyone like to test this theory?

 

[rjtd]

Did anyone tried to install ASUS EEE XP on Acer One?
Probably it is optimized for SSD.

 

[ramon2000]

Hi,

I still don't have the Aspire One, but I have found this web page to optimize Windows XP.

Probably some of the may tricks on them may be useful.

http://www.law.wustl.edu/computersuppor ... rmance.htm

Regards

 

[icebear]

@ bb320 & sidewinder:
wifi works with the drivers provided by acer,
the wlan switch is working either, its just the led which stays off - thats irritating

 

[gustavofunke]

Hello!
My Aspire One have the original 512MB RAM.
I installed the Win XP Home in Aspire One. At this first time, XP was very very very slow. Almost impossible to use. The SSD LED was always on.
I turned off the D2D in bios, and reinstall the XP SP3... And it is fast, like a normal computer (with same processor speed, and RAM).
I installed all drivers... The only "problem" is the Wifi LED is not working... But it is not bad.

It is a very good micro-notebook.

 

[Flaterik]

Someone on the driver's section have a driver that fix the problem of the light

 

[siulaba]

be sure to disable disk cache on the SSD, makes it MUCH faster, even when multitasking.

i've owned both the EEE900 and HP2133, this is far better than the two... hoping to get the EEE1000 to compare soon.

 

[rjtd]

be sure to disable disk cache on the SSD, makes it MUCH faster, even when multitasking.

i've owned both the EEE900 and HP2133, this is far better than the two... hoping to get the EEE1000 to compare soon.

Device Manager > SSD driver > Policies > Uncheck Write Cache ?

 

[josan]

Hello Techie- You had mentioned to format the SSD under Fat32. I have it currently under NTFS. Is there a significant performance difference between the two? Thanks for your reply.

 

[rjtd]

Generally FAT32 is faster.
But given that oyu have NTFS, can you please try the "compress" option?
It should give you a performance boost.

 

[techie]

Hello Techie- You had mentioned to format the SSD under Fat32. I have it currently under NTFS. Is there a significant performance difference between the two? Thanks for your reply.

I guess every bit counts and it is noticeable...the only issue with FAT32 is that there is of course the possibility that file errors may occur more frequently...a few times I had XP go and check the FAT32 filesytem on the SSD for cross linked files etc....now thats a slow startup

 

[Davidcowling]

On a 120gb traditional HDD, does windows run better on FAT32 or NTFS?

I'm planning to buy a 1GB 120GB AA1 with linux then install xp to a new partition of a usb stick, or buy a external optical drive and install it old skool

 

[rscutaru]

It would still run faster on FAT32 as it doesn't journal. But you would not notice a big difference with the 120GB between FAT32 and NTFS

 

[Davidcowling]

oh ok then.

What advantages does NTFS offer over FAT32, ive heard its more stable and can handle larger file sizes, but i'm not so sure.


Cheers!