Dell Mini & New OS

[NickNick]

Afternoon all,

Got myLtdCo a nice little Dell Mini 9 for when it's employees are on the road but the thing has never worked. Well to be more accurate, the OS (Ubuntu) has never worked. Dell have been less than useless and refuse to take the thing back, so I thought I'd have a go at replacing the OS with XP. At least that way I'm dealing with something that I know my way around, rather than trying to work out how to use Ubunut and Fix it at the same time.

As the mini has no optical drive I'll be installing XP from a USB stick. Anyone got any pointers as to where this can (and probably will) go wrong?

Cheers
N

[Netraider]

This site (Linky) might be of some use.

[pmeswani]

Afternoon all,

Got myLtdCo a nice little Dell Mini 9 for when it's employees are on the road but the thing has never worked. Well to be more accurate, the OS (Ubuntu) has never worked. Dell have been less than useless and refuse to take the thing back, so I thought I'd have a go at replacing the OS with XP. At least that way I'm dealing with something that I know my way around, rather than trying to work out how to use Ubunut and Fix it at the same time.

As the mini has no optical drive I'll be installing XP from a USB stick. Anyone got any pointers as to where this can (and probably will) go wrong?

Cheers
N

Make sure there are drivers available for your Dell. And good luck.

[Durbs]

Afternoon all,

Got myLtdCo a nice little Dell Mini 9 for when it's employees are on the road but the thing has never worked. Well to be more accurate, the OS (Ubuntu) has never worked. Dell have been less than useless and refuse to take the thing back, so I thought I'd have a go at replacing the OS with XP. At least that way I'm dealing with something that I know my way around, rather than trying to work out how to use Ubunut and Fix it at the same time.

As the mini has no optical drive I'll be installing XP from a USB stick. Anyone got any pointers as to where this can (and probably will) go wrong?

Cheers
N

I did similar on my Asus eee mini thing, installed from a USB. Cant remember what walkthrough i used but there tons out there and rest assured its very painless. Look in the eee forums if stuck as there guides on how to create a cut down version of XP and make the stick bootable.

edit, try: http://www.eeeguides.com/2007/11/ins...usb-thumb.html will be the same for your Dell.

As for your Linux installation - its not supposed to work right, thats what Linux does.

[~Craig~]

Ubuntu is about as simple as you get...especially on the Mini 9 as it has the fluffy dell menus.

What is it you're trying to do?

[Durbs]

Ubuntu is about as simple as you get...especially on the Mini 9 as it has the fluffy dell menus.

What is it you're trying to do?

I used the Linux install that came with my Asus for a while and it was 'fine', no problems, but when it comes down to it, its light years behind Windows.

Guess most people who get these mini Linux PC's give up in the end and whack Windows on.

[VectraMan]

FWIW I thought Kubuntu was quite good, and much more Windows-like than old brown Ubuntu.

[expat]

I used the Linux install that came with my Asus for a while and it was 'fine', no problems, but when it comes down to it, its light years behind Windows.

Guess most people who get these mini Linux PC's give up in the end and whack Windows on.

Just an odd question: if it's slow on linux, does it have the muscle to run Windows?

[NickNick]

Ubuntu is about as simple as you get...especially on the Mini 9 as it has the fluffy dell menus.

What is it you're trying to do?

Use the laptop in any way at all.

There is no taskbar showing which means I cannot access anything on it at all. All i get is the desktop and a Dell "panel" (I believe it's called). Right clicking on the desktop only provides the option for "change background image". So all in all, it doesn't work. I wanted to do an install of XP jsut to get the thing working.

So anyway, I followed the EEE guide link from here last night and no joy, it just wouldn't work in the slightest. Now when I turn it on, not only do I get no task bar, but I get an error that says "Main partition is 100% full" Which is a laugh seeing as I've never actually used the laptop.

Dell of course only supply support for it 8-8 and are useless.

[portseven]

Stick regular Ubuntu on it, in my experience these add-on's by vendors on OS's are more hassle than they are worth.