Upgrading Two Dell Mini 10v to Windows 7 Professional
I have wanted to write about this change for a while; I did both my personal netbook and my college age daughter’s netbook. They came with Windows XP Home SP3. I bought two WD 500GB HD Drives from Best Buy at the time I paid around $90 today this 5400RPM drive sells for $70 not bad at all. The software I bought was the student version of Windows 7 Pro from the online store Digital River for $29 per copy. I take college classes (I average 6cr per semester) and used my “edu” address with no issues there was a small trick to get the Pro version over the Home of Windows 7.
NOTE: You can get the Professional version instead of Home Premium for $30 by doing the following
1. Register your e-mail address
2. Click the link in the Eligibility Confirmation e-mail you receive.
3. Note that Home Premium is automatically added to your cart. Notice that beneath the cart is a link that ask something about needing to join your University Domain or Domain Join.
4. IMPORTANT STEP: Click the link referring to Domain Join below the cart to add Windows 7 Professional instead of Home Premium.
5. Complete the checkout process with Windows 7 Professional and save your confirmation e-mail.
Now that I have the IMG file I simply created a DVD-ROM with my portable USB burner, then I went to Dells website and downloaded all the Windows 7 drivers for my machine. In my search for my laptop I found that I bought the Dell Inspiron Mini 10 (1010) not the Dell Inspirion Mini 10V as I thought most of the drivers are the same however. I took apart my netbook and replaced the hard-drive with very little issues with a little help from a YouTube video took me all of five minutes. I had no problems getting the netbook to boot from the USB DVD drive did the default installation. I was surprised after two or three reboots that I had download a lot of drivers for no reason. The only driver that was not automatically install after I let Windows Update run/reboot/run until no more updates was the driver/application for the battery charging witch I promptly installed and reran Windows Update no further updates where available. So I started to install all my usual applications, Google Chrome Developer’s version, Skype, Dropbox, Magic Disc, Microsoft Security Essentials, Microsoft Live (IM), iTunes, Google Talk, Google Maps, Google Picasa, Google Earth, Steam, Audible downloader, 7-Zip, Quick Par, Cute PDF, Foxit Reader, Core AVC, and Microsoft 2010 Beta. Now the true test to activate my copy of Windows 7 to see how hard this was going to be, as expected failed at first try, I looked up the blog from Paul Thurrott applied the method #2 and now I have a full active copy of Windows 7 pro with all my applications now the only things was to let Dropbox copy all my files to my new hard drive and pull off any of my other files from my old hard drive all of that occurred with no issues. I used that netbook from about the first week of December 2009 until I replaced it with an Asus 1201N in April 2010 with no issues besides it was an Atom 1.33Ghz with 1GB RAM and from the list of applications above I am quit the power user and it was my primary machine ran a little slow for me. I had no additional issues upgrading my daughter netbook when she was home from college of Christmas she enjoyed the additional hard drive space and the new OS and yes I installed Google Chrome and most of the above mentioned applications on her laptop. She sent her laptop back to me in March with a bad hard drive, I took it out did an in-store one for one swap reinstalled the OS, applications and reactivated the OS with no problems five days later she had her machine back pretty good tech support if I do say so myself.
I have now install Windows 7 more than ten times including five on my own machines all with great results. I remember when I worked at H&R Block and created an automated installation disk for the franchisees to install Windows XP this OS has come a long way in making its deployment, drivers and activation mush easier. That year I bet I personally walked 150 tax professionals through installation of Windows XP Pro and Windows 2000 Server man was that painful.
To those that find/found this useful I'm glad you came and looked around. My goals is to get into the habit of writing about techie things that I do. The main purpose is to create an online presence and effectively communicate those experiences so in three to five years I have an established track record that I can use to get the CTO/CIO job at Google or Twitter or another fortune 500 company after I complete my Management of Information Systems and Masters of Business Administration. Going forward I wold like to cover my switch from a home domain controller to WHS, my pulling away from Facebook, my experience with my new netbook the Asus 1201N, my build up to purchasing a new cellphone the HTC Evo 4G, and exploration of all things techie.
Thanks Again
Richard Stouder
14 May 2010
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