Optimized Win7 install for EEE netbooks

There are many guides about installing MacOSX in classic EEE netbooks, but I could not find any about installing Win7 in the best possible way for these beloved Atom netbooks.
This tutorial assumes that you have your netbook upgraded with 2GB ram, and possibly and SSD.

Before installing win7, enable the SATA AHCI mode in your BIOS (unfortunately, this setting is not visible in some EEEPC bioses). You can then perform the installation of win7 with SP1 using either an external DVD drive, or a USB drive (google for how to create such USB images).
To maximize your netbook performance after finishing the Win7 SP1 installation, do the following:

Disable virtual memory. The logic is simple: you won’t use such an old netbook for multitasking intensive tasks or serious gaming. If you have 2GB ram (the chipset’s limit) which happens to be more than enough for desktop usage, not managing a swap file will give you the best performance (and save some SSD flash cells, if you upgraded to one of those).

Go to the Control Panel\System&Security\System\Advanced system settings\Advanced tab\Performance\Settings button\Advanced tab\Virtual memory\Change button\
Uncheck "automatically manage paging for all drives"
Select the "C:" drive and press the "No paging file" button. Press the "Set" button. Ignore the warning messages and press OK.

Enable an Aero theme. This will ensure smoother window refreshes.

Go to Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Personalization , and select your favorite "Aero" theme.

Disable transparency. Such eye-candy is unnecessary and slows down your netbook.

Go to Control Panel\System&Security\System\Advanced system settings\Advanced tab\Performance\Settings button\Visual effects tab\
Uncheck "Enable transparent glass" and press OK.

Disable font smoothing. This is essential to make it more responsive in desktop applications.

Go to Control Panel\System&Security\System\Advanced system settings\Advanced tab\Performance\Settings button\Visual effects tab\
Uncheck "Smooth edges of screen fonts" and press OK.

Replace the stock Intel VGA driver with the “Chell 1.6b” driver. This will ensure that you get the best out of your modest graphic card.

Download and install the driver from here:
http://brenton.nom.za/forum/showthread.php?tid=1

Make the Windows taskbar appear and disappear automatically. This will ensure maximum screen real estate for your applications on such a limited resolution screen. You will find that Aero makes these appearances as smooth as butter.

Right-click on the Windows taskbar and select "Properties". In the dialog box, check "Auto-hide the task bar" and press OK.

Install IE 10 (and possibly disable “tabs” in Preferences). It’s the fastest and reasonably secure version of IE. Do not surf the web with win7’s default IE browser version these days. You have been warned.

http://download.microsoft.com/downl...78-7ED04900CEDE/IE10-Windows6.1-x86-en-us.exe

Install 007 Codecs. This will ensure that you can play all current video formats (although the Atom will struggle with 1080p material).

http://shark007.net

Disable Windows Updates. Since you already installed SP1 and a recent version of IE, don’t waste CPU cycles downloading updates. Win7 won’t get Microsoft support anyway in the near future.

Go to Control Panel\System and Security\Windows Update, and select "Never check for updates".

Disable low disk space checking. This will save CPU cycles.
Create a REG file with the following content, and double-click it:
Code:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00


[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoLowDiskSpaceChecks"=dword:00000001
Disable hibernation file. This will ensure faster sleeping when you close the lid.

Click Start, and then type CMD in the Start Search box. In the search results list, right-click Command Prompt and then click "Run as Administrator". In the elevated command prompt, type "powercfg -h off" and press Enter.

After these changes, I believe you will find that Win7 performs better than XP on these netbooks. I hope this can be useful to some people and bring new life to old netbooks.

zhir Newbie