I just picked up an ASUS EEE PC 1000H, an ultra portable mini-notebook. I must say, I am pleased. I purchased the EEE PC 1000H to replace my busted Acer laptop. I realize I am sacrificing some functionality for size and portability, but it is a fair trade-off. The EEE PC 1000H PC comes pre-loaded with Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, but I wanted XP Professional. In this tutorial I will explain the steps necessary to install XP Professional on the Asus EEE PC 1000H. (These steps may also work to install XP Pro on the EEE PC 701, 900, or 901, but I cannot test. If it works for you on those models, please leave a note in the comments below.)  The method of making a custom Windows install is also sometimes called “slipstreaming”.

When I first tried to install XP Professional on the EEE PC, I encountered a bluescreen during install.  This is because the EEE PC uses a SATA drive, and the XP install discs do not include the SATA drivers.  In order to install XP Professional we need to build a custom install disc that includes the SATA drivers.  This is not as hard as it sounds, and I will go into detail below:

Requirements:

• EEE PC 1000H
• External CD Rom
• Copy of Windows XP Professional install disc
• Another PC running XP/Vista w/ CD Burner, to build custom XP Install Disc
• DriverPack for Mass Storage Devices ( available for download @ http://driverpacks.net/DriverPacks/DriverPack.php?pag=m )
• nLite Software ( available for download @ http://www.nliteos.com/download.html )

First, insert your XP install cd into the cd-rom of the computer you will be using to build and burn the custom install disc.  At this point, be sure that you’ve installed nLite on this PC and have downloaded and extracted the proper Driverpack for Mass Storage Devices. Also be sure to have about 500mb of free space on your hard drive to copy the install files to.

Run nLite.

Click Next.  On the next screen choose the cd-rom where you have your XP installation discs.

You will then be prompted where you would like to save the files for modification. Click OK.

Just pick any empty folder (or create a new folder) to serve as a temporary folder.  Click OK.

nLite will then copy the files from the XP Pro installation disc to your hard drive.  Grab a snack while it does it’s thing.

Once the files have finished copying, you will see a summary screen with details about the operation just performed.  You can click Next on this screen.

The following screen is where we will add any additional drivers to the install.  I’ve chosen to only add the mass storage drivers to this section for brevity, but feel free to add other driverpacks or driver installs for your EEE PC.  I have not tested adding other drivers, but it should work.  (I just decided to load the drivers in XP after the initial install) To add drivers, click import.

To add the Mass Storage Driverpack, navigate to the folder where you extracted the pack and locate the .ini file.  Click Open.

Once you have all of your drivers loaded, you can now click Next.

From this next screen you can choose various customizations to your install.  You can include the cd key via the unattended option.  I’ve decided not to go into too much detail here, feel free to play around as you like, or see additional resources for nLite installs at the end of this article.  Under the “create” heading, click Bootable ISO.  This will prepare us for burning the custom install to disc.  If you have not done so, remote the XP Install CD and insert a blank CD for burning.  Click Next.

Now we will prepare to burn the custom install to disc.  Choose “Direct Burn” under Mode.  Choose your cdrw burning device.  You can also label the install if you’d like (not important).  Once you have all the information selected correctly, you can click Burn.

And we are now off.  nLite will burn the custom XP Pro installation to  CD.

Once it is finished, you are basically done!  I told you it would be simple.

Now that you have your custom XP Pro install with Mass Storage drivers, all that is left is to connect the external CD rom to your EEE PC and boot!  You may have to go into the BIOS and choose to boot off the exteral device.  Provided you did everything correctly, XP Pro will now install.  Be sure that you have downloaded the XP drivers and software for your EEE PC from the Asus website.

Additional Resources:

• http://www.nliteos.com/
• EEE User Forums