July 29, 2015 at 9:42 pm
#168284
Win10 Home installation upgrade from Win7 32bit on an NC10 with 2GB RAM
Well today is the big launch day for Win10 so I thought I would dust off the old sammy and give the upgrade a go and post my findings here.
First off I had problems getting the Win10 icon in the task bar and the automatic download did not happen so I decided to install the conventional way.
As usual with installing an operating system be prepared for the protracted process to take several hours! With lots of long pauses.
You will need your Win7 Product Key (xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx)which can be found by
The following command in CMD to find the product key associated with your Windows installation:
Windows Key R then cmd
wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey
Or run Belarc Adviser free version on your machine if the command doesn’t work (didn’t on my machine for some reason)
Get the Microsoft Download Tool either 32Bit or 64Bit as required
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
Run the tool and choose either Upgrade this PC now or Create installation media for another PC
I chose to create installation media. You get two further choices:
Create a USB stick – just insert it and it will be written directly to the stick as it is downloaded.
Or Create an .iso
I used an 8GB stick (after completion just over 5GB was used). Be aware it will overwrite anything on the stick.
The download takes a few hours so I was glad I didn’t choose the Upgrade this PC now option as on a stick the install was more flexible. More of that later.
When the download is finished reboot the Sammy and begin the Win10 installation.
Note you may need to set the boot priority of the USB in the bios
After reboot it would not accept the Product Key although it is correct and has been working fine for 6 years.
Removed USB stick and rebooted.
Ran setup.exe on the root of the USB stick
Installation proceeded with the ubiquitous countdown timer which took a long time but no request for the key was made.
When it rebooted the stick was removed.
Upgrading Windows screen with overall percentage timer is then shown with individual percentage timers for:
Copying files%, Installing features and drivers%, Configuring settings%
The copying of files takes ages, over an hour at least before it reboots again.
The final setup is nicely presented but those long pauses could do with a progress counter to at least show it hasn’t locked up. However it did come up with this screen towards the end of the process. “It’s taking a bit longer than usual, but it should be ready soon. Don’t turn off your PC” which I found mildly amusing.
Upon start up I was pleasantly surprised as the display seemed ok’ish and volume and display up and down buttons worked as normal.
Further investigation showed the display adapter only gave 640×480 or 800×600 on the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter, not good. Installing the Samsung Intel 945 Win7 driver and rebooting allows 1152×864, 1024×768 and 1024×600 resolutions, so all is well.
Overall early impressions of Win10 are good if a little slow but Win7 wasn’t fast. Win10 Home System Requirements state: 1 GHz or faster processor so the Atom N270 at 1.6 Ghz should cope but perhaps a bit of tweaking is required. I’ve got used to an HP Spectre i7 quad HD laptop so I’m not surprised the sammy feels a bit slow 🙂
Hope this helps and good luck with your install
August 6, 2015 at 3:46 pm
#221971
Tried W10 just using the straight automatic process. Took about 2 hours. W10 worked OK but as reported widely, there seem to be a raft of Privacy issues and settings. Edge seemed rather odd too. I didn’t like the huge waste of space with headers on most functions. The NC10 booted a bit quicker than with W7 but otherwise no noticeable difference. There are lots of background processes you can turn off which might eventually give a little battery duration improvement.
I didn’t really think the improvements better than the drawbacks after a few days. So I used the roll back to W7. That ran quite well and I had W7 again in well under an hour. Initially it seemed all OK, but the process had messed with a few things. Windows Update still kept trying to install W10 updates for a while but seems to have stopped. Not sure how! I had MSE on it and that messed up a bit. Uninstalled and reinstalled twice and now OK. Windows Defender (W7) version may have been implicated too. Seems OK after running update for that while I had no MSE. Ccleaner had been messed with too. Only a complete uninstall and reinstall fixed that, including reselecting some options. Lastly, an IE11 reset to standard and reselect options seems to have stopped numerous crashes. The NC10 hasn’t got much else on it as I don’t use it much. So that might not be everything if you do a rollback after trying W10.
Might try W10 again in a few months. The NC10 saved doing it on a more recent machine.
August 7, 2015 at 5:32 pm
#221972
Actually, The rollback still isn’t right so doing a complete W7 re-install. Beware if you try W10. Have your image or install discs ready in case you rollback and it doesn’t work properly afterwards.
July 7, 2016 at 7:50 pm
#221969
Well I had another go with W10 the other day and this time it went much smoother starting from W7, just by deselecting the blocks set in that excellent GWX Control Panel programme then running Windows Update and letting it install W10. I just set up a local account not an MS one.
Turned off pretty well everything that looks like MS spyware/data collection and installed Spybot anti-beacon and used that to stop what it can stop. Turned off the W10 Apps.
Chose some colours that make things look a bit like XP/7. Installed Classic Shell and got a sensible start menu that’s nice and controllable. Changed to the original Samsung desktop background for old time’s sake.
IE11 works well, Firefox a bit slow, Pale Moon not bad. Edge is horrible in several ways and not fast.
Everything else I put on works, including the Win7 games pack that you can get free from Winaero.com.
So now it’s working like W7 but a little quicker. Except shutting down though, that takes about 25 seconds.
Will probably leave W10 on now and see the if the NC10 survives the W10 Anniversary edition!
August 12, 2016 at 6:56 pm
#221970
So, the NC10 updated to Win10 anniversary edition 1607. Ran very slow. Edge worse than ever and hangs if you have either of the adblocker extensions installed. Whole thing not really usable. Rolled back to 1511 version and it’s back to being quite good as per previous post.
I wonder whether the 1607 version will be pushed through automatically again…
September 13, 2016 at 8:53 am
#221967
First post in years from me!
Like others, I took the opportunity to give Win 10 go for Free on my old Win 7 NC10. First release seemed good. I did the upgrade and kept my files etc. I did the anniversary update too and all worked okay, but was a little slow still.
Anyway, cut a long story short, I felt that Win 10 was a little slow on the NC10 – not when it starts up per se, more in actual use. I like the idea of a chromebook, as it would revive a perfectly good laptop that’s worthless as a Windows machine so I tried to install CloudReady… and failed. Couldn’t get it to install for some reason, it just hangs and hangs.
Next up I tried Android x86 – which, by the way, runs amazingly well on the NC10! However, again I had problems installing it to the hard drive and managed to muck up my partitions and boot sector, giving me the dreaded “no OS found” in BIOS.
So, rather than waste time fixing stuff, I thought I’d reinstall Win 10 Anniversary update from scratch. I had no files to keep or anything, so I wasn’t bothered about that.
Got the ISO from MS, made a bootable USB stick and wiped the hard drive completely. Interestingly, it looked like the HDD still had the old Samsung recovery software partition on it, and I think that maybe this is what was mucking up my other installs, but I don’t know.
So, Windows 10 Anniversary update installed – I did not enter a product key, you do not need it if your laptop has already used Win 10. Windows online syncs the hardware ID and you get activated online like that. During install, choose “I don’t have a key,” that is, IF you’ve already had Win 10 installed on your hardware like I did. I actually quite like this feature, although am scared that if for whatever reason I decided to upgrade the HDD and needed to reinstall, would the change of HDD cause Windows not to recognise the hardware?
With Win 10 Anniversary update now reinstalled from scratch, everything is running MUCH faster and smoother – like the netbook did when I fresh installed Win 7 all those years ago. Only one driver update was needed for the graphics, which Windows found online automatically. Store updates and Win OS updates all done and everything seems peachy. It is still slow to use, mind you, if you use Edge browser for example and have more than a couple of tabs open, but it does work.
I should add that my NC10 has 2GB Ram, which I would imagine is required for Win 10 to run with any decency.
All in all, I’m pleased and impressed that the latest iteration of Win 10 installs and runs perfectly well on the NC10. Yes, it is slow and I may yet try to turn it into a Chromebook, but I’ve given the little NC10 a new lease of life if nothing else.
September 23, 2016 at 5:29 pm
#221973
I tried Win 10 anniversary edition 1607 on my NC10 again from a couple of days ago. This time the fixes that MS has introduced during August and September seem to have done the trick and the NC10 is running pretty well as good as with the earlier Win 10, which is quite good. Even Edge with Adblockplus is not bad. Nowhere near as good as MS trumpet it, but broadly same speed as ie11 or Firefox.
Running with Classic shell start menu, as much as possible of the spying/monitoring turned off etc.
Definitely worth a try.
September 28, 2016 at 5:55 pm
#221968
@t697 133702 wrote:
I tried Win 10 anniversary edition 1607 on my NC10 again from a couple of days ago. This time the fixes that MS has introduced during August and September seem to have done the trick and the NC10 is running pretty well as good as with the earlier Win 10, which is quite good. Even Edge with Adblockplus is not bad. Nowhere near as good as MS trumpet it, but broadly same speed as ie11 or Firefox.
Running with Classic shell start menu, as much as possible of the spying/monitoring turned off etc.
Definitely worth a try.
Great to hear – I’ve installed CloudReady on my NC10 and it is now a totally usable – fast – Chromebook-type-laptop-clone-thing. Mine has 2GB ram, but that’s the only mod. CloudReady is great, it actually feels as though the NC10 was made for it, not Windows, which has always been a bit clunky out the box. Only thing is, you cannot dual boot CloudReady, hence my earlier frustrations with it.
However, because Windows 10 is activated online, you can easily reinstall it if you didn’t like CloudReady for whatever reason. Personally I love it and have begun using the NC10 for example to use it in environments where it might be subject to breakage/spoil, e.g. a kitchen – somewhere my Macbook Air never dares venture!
March 27, 2017 at 8:17 am
#265972
Hi,
I want to share some impression on this argument, too.
I have a Samsung NC10 that was running slow on XP (due to poor maintenance and lots of program load) and so i decided to update it a bit. I bought a 2GB RAM and fitted it and a brand new SSD (Crucial CT525MX300SSD1 MX300), then I performed a clean install on the ssd of Win10 (don’t know if Anniversary Update or not, have to check). Everything went well, only thing I had to install (that didn’t installed automatically) was Samsung Easy Display Manager for fn keys.
Now the problem is that it works quite slow, if I look at the resource monitor I notice the CPU working almost all the time close to 100% (between 90 and 98 most of the time). Does it happens also to you?
Most of the time the MS Defender is a lot of resource and otherwise the update is the resposable. This seems to slow down the system a lot but I am not sure that disabling the MS defender (using an alternative Antivirus/malware) and completing the update will solve it. What is your experience on that? Right now it seems almost unusable, and I am starting to wonder if I could be better off with Win7 (performance-wise). What do you think?
April 7, 2017 at 8:19 pm
#266383
Hi lucamiz01, has your NC10 settled down? Mine also has 2GB RAM but the original HDD and runs Win 10 Home fairly well for such a low spec device. But I have disabled Cortana, turned off all the options that look like will result in more background process and telemetry. You have to be rigorous doing that. Several guides on the internet. I use Classic Shell Start Menu. You’ll certainly need to let it get through all its Windows updates.
I’m using Kaspersky and haven’t tried the MS Defender.
In Privacy settings scroll down and in Background Apps turn every one of them off.
Spend time going through every option in Settings and turn off everything you don’t really need.
Use Ccleaner to turn off unwanted startups. I only have the Classic Shell Start Menu, Realtek audio and SynapticsTP.
After machine has been on for a while and if no programmes are running, Task Manager settles to showing 1-2% CPU after itself using a lot for several seconds.
Overall certainly no better than when it was XP, but marginally better than when it had Win 7.
From Anniversary Edition, Edge works quite well, with ublock Origin adblocker. AdblockPlus was not very good. I got rid of that. IE11 doesn’t work that well. Firefox is fine.
Samsung NC10… Как много в этом имени… Куплен в ноябре 2008-го, собственно, когда обнаружил описание этой модели, продаж еще и небыло – были только предзаказы. Куплен на острове (в Великобритании :-), черная моделька с блутусом.
Коротко о NC10
Делать обзор самого нетбука смысла не имеет. В сети уже гуляет их достаточное количество (достаточно проверить Google-Samsung NC10 обзор). Кратко: машинка замечательная и мои потребности удовлетворяет полностью. Конечно, я не имею в виду полноценную замену десктопа (у меня в качестве “взрослого” аппарата Asus V6J, тоже совершенно потрясаюший ноут, одна из последних моделей с нормальным экраном 4:3, широкоформатные просто не переношу). Нетбук я брал исключительно для развлечения, просмотра фильмов лежа в кроватке :-), легких игр, серфинга. И конечно же, самое главное, для путешествий! Это просто нечно, батарея держит 5-6 часов (зависит от нагрузки), 4-4.5 часа просмотр видео, про Интернет я уж и молчу. В поездках вещь просто незаменимая, тем более что легкий и компактный. Некоторые несознательные товарищи на форуме путались смутить честнОй народ и говорили, что бук не оправдал надежд, плохо кажет HD видео, на нем не идут последние игры… Не верьте! В смысле, верьте конечно, Fallout 3 не пойдет, но так ведь чего вы ожидали! Встроенная графика, довольно слабенький процессор – конечно, это не Core2Duo с дискретной nVidia! Нетбук предназначен совсем для другого, и это другое он делает замечательно! Есть, конечно, несколько мелочей, которые несколько бесят, особенно в начале – но в конеце-концов к ним привыкаешь. Первое – это глянцевая верхняя крышка. Смотрится супер, когда только достаешь машинку из коробки, но уж через пару минут ноут превращается в мечту криминалиста. Второе – разрешение экрана. Я понимаю, что Самсунг пытался сьэкономить, все-таки NC10 – это не суб-ноутбук бизнес-класса, а разрешение 1024х600 уже практически стандарт для нетбуков – но все-таки очень жаль, что они не поставили матрицу с чуть большим разрешением (768 по вертикали было бы уже вполне достаточно). При 600 пикселях иногда бывают проблемы с некоторыми программами, включая отказ запускаться на разрешении меньшем, чем 768. Впрочем, в большинстве случаев окно программы просто вылазит за пределы экрана, так что невозможно нажать кнопку ОК, что лечится маленькой, но чень полезной программкой – MoveInactiveWin (ссылку искать лень, сами погуглите).
Windows 7
Итак, после долгого и упорного чтения форума (кстати, очень рекомендую тем, кто собирается покупать Sammy, выбирает нетбук для покупки или купил, но теперь не знает, что с ним делать 
возникла мысль попробовать новую винду. Поскольку к Висте я отношусь крайне отрицательно (да и по требованиям, ей надо 3-4 таких нетбука, что бы нормально работать), решил попробовать бета-версию Windows 7.
По сообщениям на форуме, несмотря на бета-версию, Windows 7 идет на NC10 просто замечательно, не тормозит, ресурсов много не требует, имеет очень симпатичный интерфейс и много полезных настроек. По описанию Экслера, вполне стоящая система. Поэтому решено было её все-таки протестировать, тем более что основнуй мой ноут оставался без изменений, а на самсунге никакой важной информации не хранится по-умолчанию, так что даже если вдруг что-то пошло бы не так, как планировалось, то ничего важного я бы не потерял.
Установка
Сама установка с флэшки вполне подробно описана здесь. К сожалению, в связи с отсутствием флэшки достаточного обьема пришлось делать загрузочный DVD (USB-DVD привод у меня имеется) и ставить с него (думаю, описывать процесс никакого смысла нет). Короче, установка занимает около 30 минут (точно не засекал), ставился последний (вроде бы) билд 7068-090321-1322. Согласно Википедии, это самая последняя версия: “25 марта ограниченная группа TechNet партнёров Microsoft получили Windows 7 build 7068 (6.1.7068.0.winmain.090321-1322). 26 марта это билд успешно утёк в Сеть. Это последняя, в той или иной степени, публичная сборка перед релиз кандидатом”. Samsung NC10 поставляется с предьустановленной Windows XP Home. Семерка успешно запускала инсталлятор, но при этом почему-то наотрез отказывалась обновлять ХР напрямую, оставляя все программы и настройки нетронутыми. Пришлось ставить чистую версию; тут тоже не обошлось без проблем: инсталлятор успешно копировал файлы с диска под ХР, но потом начались проблемы: при установке системы выскакивала ошибка (вроде как отсутствовал какой-то файл) и установка прекращалась. Поэтому пришлось устроить небольшой балет с бубном, перезагрузиться и ставить систему из-под ДОСа. При такой установке проблем не возникло.
Впечатления от интерфейса
Замечу сразу – с Вистой я знаком практическо только по обзорам, так что многое из того, что я буду тут описывать как новинку семерки, на самом деле уже есть в Висте. Но для тех, кто переходит на Win 7 сразу с ХР – это будет новинкой.
Первое впечатление – красивая система. Очень красивая. Рыбка смотрится очень натурально, я думаю, многие оставят эту обоину на рабочем столе. Я поставил себе другую, с видом на Тауэрский мост, и доволен как слон.
Кстати, дополнительные темы лежат тут: C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT\ (папка скрытая). Большие возможности по настройке интерфейса (особенно цвета и прозрачность окон). Очень понравилась кнопка Aero в правом нижнем углу экрана – при наведении на неё окна становятся прозрачными и виден рабочий стол, что особенно важно, если на нем расположены гаджеты с нужной информацией. Если нажать на эту кнопку – все окна сворачиваются (как и нажатие Win+M). Кстати, нажание Win-Space так же показывает Desktop, не сворачивая окна – удобно, если не подключена мышь. Впрочем, не имеет смысла писать много про интерфейс семерки, про все нововведения и возможности, на эту тему уже есть много обзоров (Google-настройка Windows 7).
Система
Наконец, самая важная часть обзора – собственно, производительность Windows 7 на Samsung NC10 и совместимость софта.
Windows 7 поставляется с очень маленьким набором предъустановленного софта, это связано в частности с анти-монопольными исками против Microsoft. Что, впрочем, и хорошо, меньше софта – меньше проблем, тем более, что для большинства гробов на колесиках продуктов Мелкомягких есть гораздо более компактные, менее требовательные и более функциональные аналоги. Другая отличная черта семерки: многое из того, что в системе все-таки имеется, можно безопасно и легко отключить, что позволит (потенциально) освободить часть ресурсов. Делается это тут: Start-Control Panel-Programs-Programs and Features-Turn Windows features on or off. Я, например, сразу отключил Media Player (я пользуюсь Gom Player для видео и Winamp для музыки) и Printer Service (у меня нет принтера, поэтому данная служба абсолютно бесполезна). По ощущениям (замеров не делал), загрузка стала быстрее.
Кстати, о времени загрузки. По обзорам, семерка делает это быстрее висты (что неудивительно) и даже ХР (что круто). Но есть одна особенность: после окончания загрузки, в течение нескольких минут (не замерял, но 5-8 минут в среднем) система что то там делает, от чего загрузка процессора колеблется 20-40% и постоянно идет обращение к HDD. После небольшого исследования выяснилось, что процесс, которыйответственнен за это неприличное поведение – это Windows Defender. Вроде как это софтина, специфичная для семерки (а может и для висты, тут я не уверен), и занимается она Protection against spyware and potentially unwanted software – т.е. это встроенный мини-антивирус, который следит за процессами в системе. Хоть он и тормозит систему несколько минут после загрузки, отключать его я не стал – лучше перебдеть, чем недобдеть. Сейчас у меня, сразу после загрузки, система держит около 5-10% загрузки процессора (что вроде нормально) и использует 450-500МБ оперативки (из 1024), что конечно многовато, но поскольку тяжелые приложения на нетбуке я не использую, то вполне приемлимо. Кстати, загрузка ХР была около 400-450МБ, так что Win 7 явно стала прорывом для Microsoft: первая операционка, которая требует МЕНЬШЕ ресурсов, чем предыдущая (я имею в виду Висту, конечно)!
Все устройства определились правильно, все драйвера поставились без проблем. Первоначально, не удалось подключить WiFi: драйвера были установлены, но не мог активировать карту (комбинация Fn+F9) не работала, в оригинальной ХР для всех специфический операций (изменение яркости, громкости, вкл/выкл тачпад, запустить wifi) требовалась софтина Samsung Easy Display Manager. Сразу после установки винды, ни одна из этих функций не работала. Софтина была скачана по ссылке с российского сайта Самсунг (версия 2.2.10.1), прекрасно установилась и заработала. НО! После нескольких часов тестирования обнаружил проблему: через какое-то время работы, прога каким-то образом отключается. По каким причинам – выяснить так и не удалось, но лечится это простой перезагрузкой. Причем, когда прога не работает (не показываются картинки изменения яркости и т.д.), правильная комбинация клавиш все равно изменяет громкость динамиков – но никакие другие комбинации не работают. Гибернация вроде не помеха – восстановления яркость меняется.
UPD: нашлось решение проблемы без перезагрузки (хотя причина так и неизвестна): если система перестает менять яркость, в Task Manager надо отключить процесс dmhkcore.exe, а потом запустить Easy Display Manager заново (dmhkcore.exe в папке C:\Program Files\Samsung\Easy Display Manager\). Все работает опять.
Блутуз заработал, только пришлось поставить оригинальные Broadcomm-овские драйвера. Со стандартными аппаратура работала, но так и не смог найти, как именно подключать устройства по БТ – если честно, просто лень было разбираться. Сейчас все прекрасно работает, ноут прекрасно коннектится к телефону. Да, если кому-то не нравится значок БТ на рабочем столе (у него, кстати, какой то конфликт с системой, при попытках просмотра/добавления БТ устройств постоянно вырубался Windows Explorer), его можно легко удалить через реестр:
HKLM|Software|Microsoft|Windows|CurrentV
Там ищешь папку, у которой в параметре «по умолчанию» стоит «My Bluetooth Places», удаляешь её и обновляешь рабочий стол. Вуаля, никакого значка!
Другие программы от Самсунга не ставил: они либо не нужны (как Play Camera), либо не уверен, что будут работать правильно (как Magic Doctor). Управление энергопотреблением пракрасно работает системное. Батарея показывает около 5-5.5 часов работы (как и в ХР), но точно пока не проверял.
С системными драйверами, не работал встроенный микрофон. Проблема решилась установкой Realtek High Definition Audio (Vista R221). Теперь все работает. Другие драйвера не обновлял, пока вроде проблем не наблюдается.
to be continued…
Here are the steps I took.
1. Ask via Twitter whether or not this would be a good idea!
Ben was kind enough to suggest that he would willingly let me try first… He was also kind enough to point me at this helpful starting point
2. Step 1: formatting
Couldn’t find a USB stick with 4GB or more, so decided to use one of our new iomega eGo portable drives. It needed to be formatted as a bootable drive, which requires a quick formatting first. The drive is 320GB, so this has taken up most of the day! I’m following the steps on this article (via the first one).
2. Step 2: making boot
Make the drive bootable. The above article suggests I use bootsect from my Vista disk. Oh dear, I don’t have that to hand.
A quick google suggests using: Virtual Clone Drive with which I can mount the Windows 7 ISO I have already downloaded. Have downloaded and installed Virtual Clone Drive (didn’t require a restart, and does seem to just work).
Now back to Step 2. I did what the article said, and got the following:
f:\boot>bootsect /nt60 d:
Target volumes will be updated with BOOTMGR compatible bootcode.
D: (\\?\Volume{c67ac67a-4b61-11de-bcbb-bc67a65cb956})
Updated NTFS filesystem bootcode. The update may be unreliable since the
volume could not be locked during the update:
Access is denied.
Bootcode was successfully updated on all targeted volumes.
f:\boot>
hmmm. so was that successful or not?
2. Step 3
All copied across OK.
2. Step 4
Get the Netbook to boot off the USB disk. Another quick google says I don’t need to amend the bios, just hold F2 down on a restart. Oh, hang on. That just brought up the bios settings screen. OK – so USB drive goes second after ‘USB CD’ and before the main HD.
Having re-checked I’ve got no data of importance on there…
3. Here goes with a restart…
Clicking through the various options and warnings, the main choice seemed to be Upgrade or Custom? The ‘help me choose’ link advised me that there was no upgrade from XP, so I’ve gone for the full monty.
The installer tells me this will take a while, and involve some reboots. Its now 8.25pm…
8.43pm. OK, this would have been about ten to fifteen minutes quicker if I hadn’t been side-tracked. The install got to a point where it wanted to reboot. But, after it came back from the reboot it wanted to start the installation again (as the external USB drive booted first and setup the install again).
So, I suspected I should just cancel and reboot without the USB drive in the way, but I wasn’t sure and googled around a bit before figuring that, yes, you do need to get back in the bios, move the USB drive to lower down in the pecking order, and let it restart from the hard drive.
It’s now “completing installation…”
8.54pm. into the setup screens
9.14pm. oh dear – it wanted my procut key. Dutifuly entered from the label underneath the netbook. I now have a spinning circle of animated lovliness which has been going for about ten minutes.
Maybe I should have un-checked the ‘Automatically activate Windows when I’m online’ box?
[pause for sustanence & present wrapping!]
11pm. I’m writing this in Windows 7. In answer to the above, it was something wrong with the activation, and leaving this blank made it all work.
Success…
Friday, January 9, 2009 – 2:38 PM
Update: New version of this for the final Windows 7 release is here!
The Windows 7 Team just announced a public beta and I’ve been itching to give it a try. I thought I’d see just how netbook friendly the Windows team have made Windows 7 and if a typical netbook actually had the juice to run it. What else was I going to do with my evening anyway? Hang out? drink beer?
Find out how I got on running the Windows 7 beta on my Samsung NC10 netbook…
Installation
First off… BACK UP YOUR MACHINE!. I’ve not had any issues with Windows 7 so far but it is a Beta. I don’t recommend doing what this guy did and upgrade your main machine… it’s a beta people!
You can use the Samsung Recovery Solution III utility to do this. I backed everything up onto an external USB drive before attempting to install Windows 7.
Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft and dogfood beta software a lot. If I had to reformat and rebuild the original XP install on my NC10 tomorrow it wouldn’t be a big deal. I’m not recommending everyone goes out and runs a beta Windows 7 on their NC10 for every day use. Betas aren’t for everyone!
After backing up I downloaded the Windows 7 Beta from here and burnt it onto DVD. I managed to borrow a USB DVD drive from work to do the install. If you don’t have a USB DVD drive then another option would be to copy the contents of the DVD onto a USB HDD and install off that.
Next I ran the setup from the installed version of Windows XP. The NC10 comes with two 70Gb partitions with XP installed on the C: drive. I copied any data I had on the D: drive off it and so I could use that partition for Windows 7. ALL DATA ON THE PARTITION MAY BE LOST DURING THE INSTALL.
After the install is complete, including a couple of restarts the NC10 will show the Windows Boot Manager giving you two options:
Earlier Version of Windows
Windows 7
You have 30 seconds to pick an OS or Windows 7 will start. Selecting the “Earlier Version” option will start your original XP installation.
Once you’ve logged into Windows 7 you can change the startup settings using the BCDEDIT utility. BCDEDIT can modify the timeout, change the description(s) and set XP to be the OS that starts by default:
BCDEDIT /TIMEOUT 10
BCDEDIT /SET {ntldr} description “Windows XP SP3”
BCDEDIT /SET {bootmgr} default “{ntldr}”
More details of how to use BCDEDIT can be found here. Remember to start BCDEDIT from a command prompt run as administrator.
Drivers and Updates
I encountered some network driver issues and had to setup the network after the installation had finished. I had some minor issues getting the NC10 wireless card working with my wireless hub and ended up having to put it into b/g compatibility mode. I’ve not figured out quite what the problem was but haven’t seen it with other wireless networks.
- The Marvell Yukon Ethernet controller wasn’t working right off and I ended up installing the Vista x86 device driver from Marvell’s site. This fixed the problem and I was up and running.
- I also installed the Synaptics touchpad Vista x86 driver from the Synaptics site but not the two finger scrolling software (see below).
- Microsoft Presenter Mouse drivers are already available, as are drivers for other Microsoft hardware. This got my Microsoft mouse up and running with all the bells and whistles.
- I replaced the generic sound drivers with the Realtek HD Sound Drivers for Vista which got the microphone working. Thanks to Younes for pointing this one out (see his comment below).
Updated Jan 21st:
If you want to get two finger scrolling working you can install the original NC10 touchpad driver for XP and then install the two finger scrolling software (which doesn’t seem to like the Vista touchpad drivers). Thanks to Jon for this (see his comments below).
The original post suggested using some of Samsung’s Vista utilities for their Q1 series. Turns out there there are more recent ones available for the X360-34P. Easy Battery Manager 3 3.2.1.8 and Easy Display Manager 2.1.10.1. These install fine when run as Administrator and don’t have the same problems the previous utilities did. Thanks to David @ Microsoft for figuring this one out.
First Impressions
So having got the install out of the way with no major issues does Windows 7 deliver on the NC10?
The NC10 gets a Windows Experience Index of 2.2 with the Atom processor (2.2) and graphics card (2.3) accounting for this. Accordingly you wouldn’t expect the NC10 to run high end applications or games. Here’s the description of the expected performance for low WEI values:
“A computer with a base score of 1 or 2 usually has sufficient performance to do most general computing tasks, such as run office productivity applications and search the Internet. However, a computer with this base score is generally not powerful enough to run Windows Aero, or the advanced multimedia experiences that are available with Windows 7.”
This is pretty similar to what you’d expect out of the NC10 when running XP. It’s a netbook not a high end laptop. Given that almost all the NC10’s competitors use virtually identical hardware I’d expect them to get similar WEI values. We may see some improvements in WEI when Intel release a Graphics Media Accelerator Driver for Windows with WDDM 1.1 support (see Richard’s comment below).
For all that the UI seems very snappy, certainly as responsive as the original XP installation. Most importantly I can have the Pokemon clock gadget on my desktop. What more could I ask for? That’s all I really wanted… some say I’m easily satisfied, and they’d be right.
In fact I ended up with a slick new UI without the big resource requirements of Vista.
One of the criticisms of Vista is that it was very memory hungry and simply required too many resources to run effectively on low end machines. Sitting idle with no applications running about 530Mb of the NC10’s memory is used with Windows 7. This compares reasonably with the original Windows XP install which used about 330Mb when idle. I gave the Samsung a 2Gb memory upgrade when it arrived so things are looking good.
In the process of getting to grips with Windows 7 I also came across some improvements that the Windows Live team has made; new versions of Windows Live Toolbar and Live Messenger. The Windows 7 site has some preview videos showing off all of the new features. You can also find more updates on the Windows 7 Team Blog.
So far my only gripe is that IE 8, and other applications has a very thick menu and toolbar. This presents problems in the vertically challenged netbook with only six hundred vertical pixels to play with. Some auto hiding menus and toolbars would be a nice netbook friendly feature for Windows 7 applications. If that’s the most negative thing I can come up with then I figure things are looking pretty good. All my favorite applications seem to be running fine.
Updated Jan 21st: For IE this problem is solved by running in full screen mode using F11. Thanks to Alan for reminding me of this (see his comment below). Firefox also supports the same feature.
The battery life when running the NC10 under Windows 7, although 7 has it’s own power management features including adaptive display brightness. Currently this is just something you have to deal with if you want to run a Windows 7 beta.
Given my experiences so far I’m going to make Windows 7 my primary OS on the Samsung NC10 and see how I get on. When Windows 7 RTM’s I plan to rebuild the machine from scratch (not upgrade). In the meantime if I run into issues I’ll try and post fixes here.
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Finally got around to installing Windows 7 on my Samsung NC10 netbook – not that I haven’t been dying to since TechEd in Los Angeles, I just hadn’t the time until the other night. It probably helped that PacITPros was having a Windows 7 Loadfest meeting and I wanted to have it ready to go.
The install was pretty quick and although I had backed up all my personal files, it was great that everything that was on XP was convienently backed up to the “windows.old” folder. (It made reinstalling iTunes extra fast since I didn’t have to reload my music from backup DVDs.)
I love the way it looks and it didn’t have any trouble finding drivers for all the basics – wireless network card, bluetooth mouse, built-in video. Had to use some Vista drivers from the manufacturer for some of the Samsung specific things, like the special function keys, battery manager, etc. Found a great blog article by Ade Miller about installing Window 7 on the Samsung, which was really helpful in the driver search.
The biggest issue so far has been with the free version of AVG anti-virus, which was severely slowing down the boot. I’m trying out the free version of Avaste and that seems to be working well so far. Now I need actually start using it do my regular work.