Vista install went wrong (RAM and Processor Not Available)

Greetings, I think I will just go straight to the problem then.

I recently had purchased an Acer Aspire One 110-AW [5 GB HDD; RAM Memory 512Mb + 1 GB (1.5 GB total); 8 MB Video Card] which came with Linux. And naturally I decided to install Vista on it since not only do I like it better, but I also read it makes better use of the Atom processor this NetBook has.

Since the Vista Ultimate x86 that I wanted to install on the NetBook asked for 8.5 GBs of free space I used Vlite to slim it down a little bit. I slimed it down by getting rid of things like Printer software, Speech recognition and some of the languages. I am as sure as I can be that I did not remove anything essential.

So I insert the new slim version of Vista into the external DVD drive hooked up to the Acer Aspire One, restart, F2, change boot order, boot the DVD, merge the two partitions to get one of 7.5 GB, format it, initiate the install. It copied the files pretty quick and got through the Expanding files, Installing features and Installing updates very quick. But right after that it rebooted and started the “Completing installation” section which took many hours (somewhere above 4 or 5). When it got through that Vista the setup asked for the Product key, User Name, language and I think that was it. It finalised and rebooted, yet again extremely slow.

And this is when the fun began. Somehow I was not allowed to change neither screen resolution (from 800x600 to 1024x600), nor configure Network and Sharing, nor many other things; I even couldn’t install the touch pad driver that I had on the USB stick along with the other drivers that I pre-downloaded from the Acer web page. In some cases it would give me the “Access denied!” message, other time some IKernel.exe ERROR or something like that. And all that time I was unbelievable slow, a lot more slower than was described in different reviews and videos by people who had done the same.

So I somehow ended up clicking Properties on My Computer and there were two things I noticed. First: the Vista was not yet activated since I could not get the LAN to connect. And second: next to the “Processor:” and the “Memory (RAM):” sections it said “Not available”. I still can’t understand how that was even possible.

What I did was reboot and press F2 again to see the Setup. There it was all fine: it was showing over 1500 MB of RAM Memory.
Since there was nothing else I could think of to do I made a new slimed version of Vista (double-checking every section) and am at the “Completing installation” part as I speak. The installation is about 2 hours into it and I am working on my HP Pavilion DV5 for the time being.

I need some help with all of this. Please tell me if I did any mistakes in the process or should I have done anything else.

I hope that this think will not repeat itself, but just to be prepared I want to know if there is something I can do.

I will be waiting for your replies. Thank you all in advance.

Yours faithfully.

P.S.: My touchpad worked neither with Linux nor with Vista. Will installing the proper driver correct it?

 

(Sorry for double posting)

I just reinstalled the slimmed Vista Ultimate. this time it reconnised the Ram and the Processor perfectly, but it is still running very slow. It took more than an hour for the two Intel drivers to install and now I am struggling with the other ones. Is it supposed to be that slow even if I took of all the Vista animated effects and stuff?

One more thing: I still cant change the resolution from 800x600 to 1024x600. It does not allow me to moove the slider bar in the settings. What do I do about this?

Yours faithfully.

 

That's because you've installed Vista on 8GB SSD drive. It is slow. Much slower then HDD... There is couple of thread covering this kind of installation... Try to find something in this section: http://aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=60

VGA driver...