Windows 7 Pre-Beta on the Mini-Note
So far this week we’ve seen an eeePC 1000h and an MSI Wind running Windows 7 Ultimate pre-beta with good results, so lets see how a Mini-Note Handles it.
It took about 25 minutes to install everything and get to the desktop and I think it took about that long for the initial Vista setup way back when. As far as drivers go, only three things were fully missing from the Device Manager – the ethernet controller, and two unknown devices. Windows Update got things straightened out and I was on my way…
Boot up time was about a minute and twenty-two seconds. It might be ever-so-slightly faster because I still have a boot loader on there for Vista. Overall it’s a bit faster than Vista (1:38), but slower than XP (55 seconds). After all this is where the trouble began…
The Windows Experience Index test kept erroring out and wouldn’t complete, and 3DMark06 also had major errors and wouldn’t complete it’s test. Closing the lid or using the Start Menu Sleep button would only shut off the screen and brought me back to the user login, but wouldn’t actually power the unit down at all. Most likely the drivers are causing some issues so I hit up HP’s site and installed all the Vista drivers over…and still had the issues. It seems the video drivers are the culprit because the WEI would complete successfully until the video drivers were installed:
For the record the error was: “an unknown error has caused WinSAT to fail in an unexpected way.” Oh so helpful 
Anyways, if we use the Vista score to guesstimate Windows 7’s scores, they should be pretty much the same.
Here’s the preliminary benchmarks, but take them worth a grain of salt because of the misc driver issues: (As mentioned, 3DMark06 and PCMark05 wouldn’t complete. Also Windows Defender is disabled on all Vista/W7 tests)
| Comp | Geek Bench | Passmark | 3DMark03 | 3DMark06 | PCMark05 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mini-Note #9 (Windows 7) | 547 | 162.1 | 358 | – | – |
| Mini-Note #3 (Vista) | 532 | 153.6 | 358 | 91 | 930 |
| Mini-Note #7 (Vista SP1 w/new video drivers) | 544 | 156.6 | 411 | 100 | 1012 |
| Mini-Note #6 (XP) | 547 | 194 | 480 | 113 | 989 |
| Mini-Note #8 (XP SP3 w/new video drivers) | 557 | 211.3 | 478 | 115 | 1026 |
As far video playback goes, YouTube looks great regular or full screen mode in either normal or high quality playback. Hulu is also pretty good in regular screen and standard definition, but if you increase the size or resolution it starts dropping frames pretty bad. The Super Bad DVD rip I used for previous tests, did drop a lot of frames in full screen which is in kind of weird considering how well it handled the rest of the videos and comparable benchmarks to Vista. (Note: The K-Lite codecs were installed also)
Overall it does seem a bit faster than Vista and things are looking really good for this pre-beta. As Brad Linder said, if it’s already running this good on Ultimate, there’s not a need for a specific netbook build. However, I bet they will offer a cheap, stripped down version to replace XP that will have similar hardware limitations for the discount.
February 4th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Hi
I have put Windows 7 on my 2133 and was wondering if anyone had any tips on enabling the sleep mode?
On the start menu it says “Sleep”, but is faded.
I’m open to any tips
Thanks
March 5th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
i have installed a windows 7 on my compaq mini 700ee but i believe i need a drivers for it any one plz just link it so we can download it…thanx
April 7th, 2009 at 6:01 am
If u install the the latest drivers from via arena the wei will complete after a long time an the sleep an resume works fine.
wei score
processor : 1.5
Memory(ram): 4.0
Graphics(aero): 1.0
Game Graphics : 2.2
Primary H.D.D : 5.1
Via C-7M 1600mhz , 2Gb Ram , 120gb HDD. Via Chrome9 chipset,
Only 1280×768 is supported, games an all , unless it runs windowed. no other fullscreen resolutions only 1280×768
loox good tho 
Only drawbacks are large media librarys 5000 items an up will lag up the media player an almost completely lock up media center in 7 ultimate (media center stops responding for minutes to hours in music library on mine unless theres less then 100 albums)
The rest of the operating system runs better than vista, even XP , faster desktop load time an faster explorer load (start menu is faster an explorer is faster on load an HDD browse time) media playback is laggy if desktop background is set to cycle pictures unless u use lowres pictures stretched 640×480 some 800×600 depending on compression.
to install drivers, on boot hold f8 to get boot options, select disable driver signature check to boot, when running driver setup use vista drivers an right click setup executable an goto propertys set program compatability to vista an apply, then right click setup an run as administrator, worked 4 me should work 4 you
April 7th, 2009 at 6:14 am
i also installed the hyperion v520 drivers for vista in the same way mentioned above,
i noticed a small drop in the average amount of processor usage of the OS an Mediaplayer after i had installed this driver,, helps save battery power an accelarates media playback (smoother movies usually).
i hope this helps anyone else out there who has had troubles getting the OS to work efficiantly.
April 18th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Hi DeSYFA!
Wich driver must install? I install http://www.viaarena.com/Driver/VIA_HyperionPro_V523A.zip driver but sleep mode doesn’t work. Help me please.
Thx
April 27th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Keep working ,great job!
June 26th, 2009 at 4:16 am
Hi, I am getting an error when booting from USB “Unable to locate drivers”. How did you guys get past this??
PLMK, thanks.