Asus C90S OS Installation Guide

Windows XP Professional SP2:

1) Bios: Make sure your Bios is up to date, the current version is 801. If you don’t have Bios 801 on your notebook, you can download the ISO from this forum thread and follow the instructions:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=141730

2) Load Windows XP Professional SP2 disc into CD/DVD Drive and when Asus logo appears press “Esc” this will bring up the boot menu, select the CD/DVD Drive. Let Windows load, you might even want to create a partition at this point in case you want to dual-boot with a version of Windows Vista later on, this is up to you, at least format the Hard Drive for a clean install.

3) After the Windows installation is complete it will ask you some basic setup questions like auto update, disable this for now you can turn it on later. I recommend changing the resolution to 1680x1050 now so it will make reading the set up stuff easier or at least something higher then the standard resolution.

4) Take out the Windows XP Professional SP2 disc and insert the C90S Driver disc. (v1.0 or v2.0 doesn’t matter). Make sure your on the driver tab and select install drivers now. If you know where to get updated for NV display ( www.laptopvideo2go.com/) , Realtek HD Audio ( www.realtek.com.tw/downloads) and the Synaptic Touchpad drivers ( http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=7448) then don’t bother to install them now and just uncheck them. There should be about 4 or 5 reboots before the driver installation is done.

5) After the driver installation off the disc. Run Windows Updater and choose ‘Custom’. Select all ‘Available Updates’ and ‘Optional Updates’. If there are any of the ‘Optional Updates’ that you absolutely do not want to install, for example ‘Desktop Search Tool’ slows loading Windows and takes up valuble system resources, then simply uncheck it. I’ve had best results with installing the ‘Optional Updates’, like say ‘.Net frameworks’. Rinse and repeat, keep checking for updates till there are non left.

6) This is where you would install any update drivers you downloaded for graphics cards, sound chips, touchpad or network devices. If you didn't update your Bios this would be another good place to do this. Also after updates are done is a great time to install MS Office and then run updates again with Updates for Office turned on. If you install office before you update Windows XP, 9 times out of 10 it will give you grief after and it’s a headache to fix.

7) Now for utilities. All Utilities on the disc are out of date and will more then likely not function right, the curse of the C90S. For up to date utilities go to support.asus.com and click on downloads. Here is where it gets tricky, the working ATK drivers and ATK utilities are not listed on the C90S page, first select Notebook, the underneath the notebook options will open up, don’t select the ‘C90’, but underneath you’ll see ‘Utilities’ select that and now press the search button. There you’ll see ATKDrv and ATK Utilities, download them for you respective OS. Also don’t forget to get your updated TurboGear Utility from the C90S page. If you want to get the Wireless Console, Mail Checker and any of the other toys now would be the time. In order for the TurboGear hotkey to work with TurboGear the order you install them is important. First install the new ATK Drivers, if there are ATK drivers already installed you can go to you device manager, disable ATK and then uninstall them. Reboot, install Turbo Gear and the VGA Enhancer (optional, inside TurboGear folder after you unzip it) and then the ATK Utility and reboot. After the PC starts up again, test out the TurboGear hotkey (far right hotkey) and use a program like EVEREST to monitor your CPU’s FSB and clockspeed.

8) After this you can install any other utilities, this is up to you. Tweaks you might want to look into is switching the power profile to ‘Office/Desktop’ and adding a Battery Status icon to the taskbar via the Power Management menu in the Control Panel, you can also change what the power buttons and close lid do there or disabling the Power Management features for the Network Cards via the device manager under Network Adaptors, right click on each your Wireless Card and the Gigabit Ethernet Adaptor and under the power management tab unchecking the boxes. I normally install programs after I test the stability of the system with some bench programs and go on to install second OS.

 

Windows Vista:


1) If you’re doing a dual boot and have already followed my instructions for Windows XP SP2 then you may skip this step and go to step 2). Bios: Make sure your Bios is up to date, the current version is
801. If you don’t have Bios 801 on your notebook, you can download the ISO from this forum thread and follow the instructions:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=141730

2) Here is where things get interesting. Windows Vista is a whole new OS, with new rules and headaches, but that’s what I’m here for, to help you. First off, in the US there are 4 versions of the already very different Windows Vista (Home Basic, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate) that are available. I am assuming you have already chosen one of the 16 US variants and are ready and set to go. If you are not, then there is a simple step you can take to make installing Windows Vista as similar to this guide as possible. Go to Microsoft’s website and buy one of the Anytime Anywhere Upgrade disks for $7, as either 32-bit or 64-bit and take any one of the 16 different CD-Keys and have upgrade disabled (spend $14 and get both). That means it will clean install any of the 16 different variants of Windows Vista and will make this guide all the more universal (and is brought to you by Microsoft, so all legit). There are some more European and Asian versions of Vista, I maybe German, but I live in the US and have no experience with these.

3) If you are not dual booting, you may skip this step. As mentioned before, if you’re dual booting you will need a second partition. You can do this one of two ways, when you are installing Windows XP you can create a small partition to install Windows XP on and leave the rest un-partitioned or after you install Windows XP using a program like Partition Magic to shrink your main OS partition. I recommend making your Windows XP partition between 60-100GB depending on how many and what kind of programs you are going to install, for example just a simple OS to run programs that no longer work in Vista needs less space then one that has games or MMORPGs that have numerous updates that are about 10GB per game. Also where your going to store your media like movies and music should also be your larger partition, I like Vista’s file structure, thus that’s where I keep my media.

4) Ok, now we actually get to installing Windows Vista. Insert your disk of choice into the DVD/CD-Rom and press Esc at the Asus logo. This will bring up the boot menu, choose the drive with your Windows Vista install disk in it and install. Choose the unallocated space you have set aside for Windows Vista and format.
5) After the Windows installation is complete I recommend changing the resolution to 1680x1050 now so it will make reading the set up stuff easier or at least something higher then the standard resolution.

6) This is also the point where you want to make up your mind if you want to use the UAC or not. It is important to choose this early since if you change this later on some programs you have already installed may not work right because of how the UAC works. You can do this by clicking on the ‘Start’ menu>>’Control Panel’>>’User Accounts’>>’Change your Windows password’ at the very bottom, ‘Turn User Account Control on or off’.

7) Take out the Windows Vista installation disk and insert the C90S Driver disc. (v1.0 or v2.0 doesn’t matter). Make sure you’re on the driver tab and select install drivers now. If you know where to get updated for NV display ( www.laptopvideo2go.com/) , Realtek HD Audio ( www.realtek.com.tw/downloads) and the Synaptic Touchpad drivers ( http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=7448) then don’t bother to install them now and just uncheck them. There should be about 4 or 5 reboots before the driver installation is done.

8) After the driver installation off the disk open Windows Updater, normally this should run automatically after it detects as internet connection. Let it update Windows Vista and let it reboot. Open Windows update again, click on ‘Change settings’ in the menu on the left hand side and check both the options below, this will add some updates that wouldn’t normally show, plus updates for other Microsoft products like Office, click ‘Ok’. Now click ‘Check for updates’ and rinse and repeat till there are no more.

9) This is where you would install any update drivers you downloaded for graphics cards, sound chips, touchpad or network devices. If you didn't update your Bios this would be another good place to do this. Also a good place to install Office, though I have come across no bugs yet with Office in Vista that would prevent updates like in Windows XP if installed before imports Windows Updates.

10) HOTFIXES! I had promised SP1 here instead of a list of hotfixes, but alas this registry tweak no longer works and the new release for SP1 is making its way around torrent sites and I really don’t trust torrents, so here we go with a list of hotfixes for Vista32. If you are unsure or have 64-bit OS, please read the article for each:

a) KB938194
b) KB938979
c) KB940069
d) KB940105
e) KB941542
f) KB941600
g) KB941649-v2
h) KB942089
i) KB943544

11) Now for utilities. All Utilities on the disc are out of date and will more then likely not function right, the curse of the C90S. For up to date utilities go to support.asus.com and click on downloads. Here is where it gets tricky, the working ATK drivers and ATK utilities are not listed on the C90S page, first select Notebook, the underneath the notebook options will open up, don’t select the ‘C90’, but underneath you’ll see ‘Utilities’ select that and now press the search button. There you’ll see ATKDrv and ATK Utilities, download them for you respective OS. Also don’t forget to get your updated TurboGear Utility from the C90S page. If you want to get the Wireless Console, Mail Checker and any of the other toys now would be the time. In order for the TurboGear hotkey to work with TurboGear the order you install them is important. First install the new ATK Drivers, if there are ATK drivers already installed you can go to you device manager, disable ATK and then uninstall them. Reboot, install Turbo Gear and the VGA Enhancer (optional, inside TurboGear folder after you unzip it) and then the ATK Utility and reboot. After the PC starts up again, test out the TurboGear hotkey (far right hotkey) and use a program like EVEREST to monitor your CPU’s FSB and clockspeed.

12) After this you can install any other utilities, this is up to you. Disabling the Power Management features for the Network Cards via the device manager under Network Adapters, right click on each your Wireless Card and the Gigabit Ethernet Adapter and under the power management tab un-checking the boxes. I normally install programs after I test the stability of the system with some bench programs and go on to install second OS. Also any performance tweaks, but in all honesty those hotfixes took care of that for me.

 

Yeah OSX on it would be cool lol (I know some people succeded installating tiger on a C2D PC)


Also, If you wanna get the same battery life on Vista than XP, it's easy. Since XP's power saver is 168/100 while vista is 275/200, you just have to set vista to "high performance mode" and underclock it to 168/100 and that gives you 1:30 on the battery rather than 1:`10

 

For generic XP tweaks see the XP Install guide in my signature. They may not be so essential nowadays with the more powerful machines, but bloatware and the (sometimes silly) Windows defaults can still bring your machine down on its knees, no matter how fast it is...

 

In my screenies in that OC thread you can see my videocard already goes down to 168/100, so all is good there RivaTuner 2.06 and NV 169.02 are out so I'm gonna be playing with them in the next couple of days.

And the main reason I posted this is because I've been getting PMs here and on laptopvidoe2go.com asking me how I installed Windows XP and in which order I installed my drivers for TurboGear actually to be working.

*edit* What brightness do you have your screen on?

 

On vista? Yeah mine does it sometimes by itself since I installed the last hotfix

 

As I said, rather then making a long list of hotfixes I'll include a how to for the SP1 BETA (through Windows Updates).

 

But the SP1 beta is of august right?

 

I had no problems installing xp, maybe I should beat you to the guide on dual boot and one up you with a triple boot guide thats what I have.

Vista Ultimate x64
Vista Home Premium x86
Windows XP x86

 

That would be sweet man!

I'm thinking of doing a OSx86 mod on my C90S and doing a triple boot, but I'm sorta shying away from the idea because of the work and time involved. Probably just gonna install OSX Leopard on an external.

 

Due to I get random Blue Screens I am thinking about switching to XP ... can someone post a Dual Boot tutorial (First Vista, then XP)... thx

 

I'm pretty sure it's much easier first XP, then Vista...

 

Much easier, but if you have to make a new partition using Windows Vista disc management tool (DO NOT USE Partition Magic in Vista):

1. 'Start'>>right click 'computer'>>manage>>'Disk Management'>>right click on your main HDD and 'Shrink Partition' (you can shrink it more if you 'defrag' before).

2. Install XP on new partition. Like I listed before.

3. Run a repair install on Vista, this will add the boot menu.

 

BAM!

Vista is up, OSx86 Leopard is gonna take a while. Its my first time doing a Mac OS on a PC.

 

Thanks for great tutorial but I have a cuple of questions. What is VGA enhancer and is the order of installing important to get the atk utilities working?

 

How's it coming along with trying to install OSX on the C90s?

 

Turbo Gear VGA Enhancer is a program that overclocks your video card to 500/450 (3D Performance), so you don't need to use an app like RivaTuner or nTune to OC. Its a part of Turbo Gear, like an add on you can install. I like this because Asus naturally presumed that user were going to OC their video card if there CPU was already OCed and they set it to a low OC. I have no idea what the Turbo Gear VGA Enhancer will clock the DDR3 version to, would be funny if it clocks it down though.

Also ATK seems to be a little temperamental on how you install it for the Turbo Gear Hotkey to work and thats one of the simpler orders of installations I've found for it to work. Sorry if it seems like a lot of hoops to jump through but it was by luck that I stumbled onto the first combo. This is the third and shortest working combos and also doesn't leave you with 2 ATK Utility entries in the uninstall list.

Still waiting for my friend drop me my copy, bought a multi license pack and I was gonna pay him for one of the copies. Looking more and more like it might be a Christmas present.

 

hey guys

due to some problems running a local server, installing fonts and running multiple IE on my vista installation i was just trying to install XP pro 2002 version in my asus c90s. this is without sp2. I'm running into this bluescreen problem while loading XP from the disc.
Do you guys have any clue why, is it the mashine that is not compatible with XP without sp2 or is it something in vista that f**ks things up.

kind regards
T

 

SATA compatibility? Please look for "SATA drivers Windows XP" on the forum or google.

 

ok thanks for your reply, it seems i have to slipstream both the sata driver and the sp2.. sounds a bit tricky but hopefully i'll get there later on today.

regards

t

 

Slipping SP2 is really no big deal with nlite, you should need to slip the SATA drivers with SP2 slipped since the C90S uses an older chipset that Windows XP Service Pack 2 should recognize.