No Windows 7 on the HP Mini 2140- yet
I was feeling ambitious today and I set out to do something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I wanted to install Windows 7 on the HP Mini 2140 and see a fine netbook running what I believe may be the best OS for such a computer. Hours later I am still yet to get it installed.
I have Windows 7 on a DVD so the first step was to connect a DVD drive to the Mini 2140 via USB and get that install going. I ran into an obstacle pretty quickly as I couldn’t find a USB drive laying around anywhere. I know I have one somewhere but if memory serves me right I haven’t seen it since I moved last year. That means it’s likely in some box stored somewhere. No big deal I’ll just install it from a USB stick.
That was easier said than done too as every USB stick I pulled out, and I have so many of them, all tap out at 2 GB or smaller. The install DVD has ~2.5 GB of files that need to be copied onto the USB stick for installation so that just wouldn’t work. I rooted through every drawer in the office but couldn’t come up with a stick >2 GB. Bummer.
Then it hit me, I could use the 16 GB SD card I use in the video camera as it was easily big enough. It wouldn’t be as fast as a USB stick but probably would be faster than a DVD drive so I was back in business. I copied all the DVD files over to the SD and then sat down at the 2140 to get on with the install.
I was still trying to decide if I wanted to do a dual-boot configuration or a simple clean install when I started getting suspicious about the ability to boot the 2140 from SD. I might be mistaken but I remember the 2133 could boot from SD so I went digging through the BIOS to make sure that SD boot was enabled. That option wasn’t there. I went off on a hunting trip across the web and can’t find any indication that the 2140 will boot from SD.
Interestingly, the similar Mini 1000 can be booted from SD, the BIOS supports that option. I did confirm that the 2133 would also boot from SD so it looks at this point that the 2140 is the only netbook model HP offers that won’t boot from SD. Maybe it’s because HP feels that would be a security risk for a netbook aimed at the enterprise but it’s got me dead in the water at this point. Maybe I’ll get Windows 7 installed on this baby eventually. I guess I’ll have to start digging through storage boxes for that DVD drive.
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even if it could boot from SD just “copying” the DVD files over to the SD wouldnt be enough, it has to be made “bootable”.
Hi,
You may want to try this;I put Win 7 on my Acer one yesterday. I shared the DVD drive in my regular laptop within my home network and then accessed it from the Acer. It is slower I guess, but much easier than digging around for my portable drive. It worked great.
Ellen
zFrame, you are correct it would have to be made bootable (and was).
Ellen, that will be next on the list time permitting.
James, while your point regarding no-SD boot on the 2140 is valid, I think this discussion could have been a few sentences long rather than six paragraphs.
Can you put the SD card in a USB reader and then boot from USB? I’ve never tried something like that, but it might work.
Not quite related to your problem, but for grins I installed Win 7 (x86) today on an old PC I built about 7 years ago. It has an AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (1.4 Ghz) single-core CPU, 768 MB of RAM, and an old video card with 64 MB of memory. It installed in about 25 minutes without a hitch, and it runs like a champ. It seems to run just as well as XP does (I set it up as dual boot XP/Win 7). Obviously, with those specs there’s no Aero. So, I set it to maximize performance rather than appearance. It’s actually quite zippy (even with all of the UI eye candy turned on).
Assuming Microsoft doesn’t do anything that kills performance between now and RTM, I can’t imagine that PC manufacturers are going to be too happy about the fact that Win 7 runs so well on older equipment. It even recognized a crappy old webcam I had attached to the PC, and told me there was a driver update to download for it. Vista had barfed on that webcam (I had to buy a new one for my Vista PC).
So far, Win 7 seems like a keeper.
This is what I wanted to do James, I can’t wait till you get it installed!
I was wondering if I should opt for the 2 gig vista 2140 for $549 or go for the 6 cell battery version for $529.
I wish they had an option to get the 6 cell and 2 gig of ram for $579, but it seems that customizing that option brings the total to $779 on the hp site!
It just doesn’t make sense to get Vista, if I’ll be updating to Win 7 when it comes out. And it’s interesting that you can’t opt for a 2 gig Win XP machine on the hp site.
Well, regardless, I can’t wait for your impressions, and a video of it in action would be awesome!
thanks,
Larry
Jon, that’s on the list to try too. :)
Have I mentioned how much I want your job? This is the kind of fun stuff I squeeze in the few free hours I get after work.
Hmmm… I can’t remember if the free ISO Recorder application can create an .ISO file from a CD/DVD. If so, the resulting .ISO file can be installed with a Virtual CD power toy.