to G1 owners: asus g1 OS,programs

Hello, this week i'm getting my G1.
This is question mostly to G1 owners:
Do i need to reinstall OS for better perfonce, if yes whats the way to do it best, either without loosing drivers or where to donload them? which versions of drivers for Hardware did you get, did it work well?
How tp customize the small display, is it hard?
Are the most included programs needed or just garbage?
Do you like the Power4Gear?

thanks any advices apreciated thanks




Edited: When i'll get vista in Feb, will i be able to use the XP MCE restore cd to install it on my desktop

 

Ideally what you want to do is, boot up the laptop, look at all the programs installed and what is in your startup, then clean it manually as much as possible. This should take about 30 minutes to a hour with looking up programs and .exes on the internet.

If you feel that things are still too sluggish for your needs or opinion, then by all mean start fresh, and use the ASUS driver and utilities CD provided. And use the internet to help find any updated drivers you may want.

 

ok I think it will be quicker to do it like milestonepc says. Also give the programs their chance to prove to you they are useful and then slowly eliminate the ones that are bad.

I think powe4gear and splendid are good programs. framework media4go and whatever norton skype net4gear and a lot of others are bad.

If you do a clean install i think it takes more time and its going to be harder to reinstall the good programs

only in a dell are you going to have so much crap to deal with will you save time reformatting.

 

That's right, you can spend up to 2-3 hours installing window + drivers + looking and searching for updated drivers on the internet. While it doing the above mentioned also makes you familiar with the programs in your notebook, and from there if you want to reformat then you know right away what you want and don't want.

 

i just got my g1 yesterday. it does come with a lot of programs running. but i dont think its too much. its mostly asus utility software. This is my first time using media center edition, its not bad. but i prefer xp pro, so i think i'm probably going to reformat and do a fresh install.

 

Agree, that's what I've done.

 

There is ADD/REMOVE programs in control panel. There's MSCONFIG. There's the startup folder. There are numerous REGCLEANERS out there.

The fundamental law: don't fix it if it ain't broke.

You probably will have more problems and headaches trying to reinstall the OS. Heck, if I were you I wouldn't even bother until Vista comes out and just install Vista.

 

Hi
I am getting G1 next week.
Altough Media center is good ,it sucks when it comes to security
XP pro is the best , and thats why G1 is like 200$ cheaper
I have XP pro
How difficult it is to reinSTALL XP Pro on the asus G1 ?
iF i do that does that void my warranty ?

Does the drivers for MEdia center same to the drivers for XP ????
THANKS IN ADVANCE

 

3 hours for a fresh install? it took me about 1 hour 30 minutes to get xp pro up and running (repartitioned the hdd, installed drivers, nero, open office, power4gear, multiframe, splendid, direct console).

i had no problems whatsoever during install, the asus drivers cd provided me with all the drivers i needed.

i also installed windows vista bussines on another partition, works like a charm. the only driver i needed for vista was the vga driver ( you can download it at laptopvideo2go.com)

cheers!

 

Thanks.

 

Bones
can u guide me how to install XP pro over Media center and then how to the drivers ?

Just so that I come to know the best process , instead of just need-to-know basis information,
I wud make do with redirection to some site which has all of it ....

 

I just got my G1.

It's installed with XP Pro!!! And they also gave me the Windows XP Pro DVD.

I ordered from the UK - Laptops Direct.

They partitioned it for me..... C: 100GB, D: 60GB..... exactly what I intended to repartition when I got it. And I didn't even ask them to do it for me.

 

Hey there!

1. It's quite simple. On system boot (when you see the Asus G1 brand showing on the screen) you hit the F2 key.
2. In the BIOS menu that just showed up, you navigate to the "Boot" tab. You set the primary boot device to the cd-rom/dvd-rom, and hit the F10 key (save and exit).
3. After you hit F10, the system will restart. You boot from the XP PRO CD you have in your drive (at one point in the boot process the system will ask you if you want to boot from the CD-ROM drive...all you need to do is press any key while you see this message on screen)
4. Assuming you have the XP pro disc in your drive, Windows should start setup.

5.
I must warn you, in case you didn't know.

!!!!!!! If you repartition your drive you will loose all data stored on it. !!!!!!

If you have any work of your own or data worth saving, please transfer them to another computer as they will be deleted in the formating process!

All you need to do now is to repartition the drive. At one point, shortly after the setup process begins, you will come to a screen that asks you on what partition do you want the system to be installed on. My recomandation is to repartition the drive. I had mine repartitioned like this :
-20gb NTFS XP partition
-20gb OS test partition
-110gb NTFS store partition
I use the test partition defined above to install and test various OS's. Assuming you wont be needing one such partition i recomend that you partition the drive like this:
-20gb NTFS XP partition
- ~130gb NTFS store partition (allocate all of the remaining space to this partition. i wrote "~130gb" because thats the amount of space you should have left after defining the XP partition)

The partitioning interface in the windows setup is pretty intuitive (me thinks ), you should have no problems with it.

After you created your partitions, you select the 20GB partition to install windows on it. The next screen will ask you how do you want your drive formated. Here you select NTFS (not NTFS (quick) )

6.After the first reboot (the first reboot in the setup process) you reset you primary boot device to whatever it was before (i think it was"removable device"). Read steps 1-2 listed above.

7. Windows finishes setup, not much to talk about here...the menus that come up later in the setup process should be pretty much self explanatory.

8. After windows finishes setup you install the drivers from the Asus G1 CD that you were provided with. I installed all the drivers and a couple of utilities.

The utilities i chose are the ones i considered best fit my requirements : Power4Gear, Splendid, Multiframe, wilreless console and NB Probe

That should be it. If you happen to need more specific details on one certain part of the process, please feel free to ask!

Cheers

 

May I ask which driver did you use for the 7700 Go for Vista x64 please?

 

Ok I have the same problem.. But i dont have any legal copy of windows besides the recovery disk and if i boot from it, it doesnt give me de option to install without bloatware ( i mean there is no blue background and formating options etc., just "recover").. and i dont see a cd key anywhere

 

A fresh install may not be necessary. I deleted the applications I didn't want, and it works fine. While the G1 has some bloat ware, it's nowhere as bad as the stuff Dell and HP include in their computers.

 

I cannot answer that question as i am using Vista x86. However, you can find drivers for your x64 version either at
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_97.46.html

or

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/index.php?drivers&series=95&os=6&type=1&dir=1

The driver version i'm using on my vista is 97.52.

 

Most recovery disks (i guessing this one too) reinstall your OS, partition your hdd just the way they were when you opened your notebook for the first time. You won't be prompted for any choice during the install process. Even though i haven't tried the Asus G1 recovery disk, i am certain this should be the case here as well...it's a kind of Windows Unattended install...

At best you can use an application like "Partition Magic" to repartition your hdd from windows. As far as the apps go, you should simply go to Add/Remove Programs and unistall any app that you don't find usefull (i'm talking about the Asus bundled apps).

Here's what i installed on my G1 (from the Asus utility disk) and what i recomend you keep on yours :

Power4Gear : neat app for Power management, i recomend you install this, it's quite usefull.

Asus NB Probe : system monitoring utility

Wireless Console : very cool app that allows you to manage active wireless connections

Direct Console : provides control over the mini LCD

Splendid : Color management app

Multiframe : I'm a web designer/developer, this app comes in very handy when it comes to repositioning windows.

That's about it...

 

I didn't find it necessary to reinstall. XP MCE is effectively Pro anyway, plus the digital media additions and minus the ability to attach to a domain (not an issue for me).

That said, I did find it necessary to download Partition Magic and join the two partitions that Milestone PC *cough* apparently split my drive into, not including the hidden Recovery partition (probably more to do with the Asus Recovery DVD than them though). Thankfully, it lets you do this without data loss (Disk Management, unfortunately, will not). After that, the default setup is alright, just go through MSCONFIG and remove whatever programs you don't want loading when you start. There are a lot of systray icons by default, but many of them are Asus- and hardware-specific things that actually have some use.

 

Unless you had Milestone switch out the hard drive for the 7200 speed before it was shipped, it was partitioned by Asus.