Dell
How to make a bootable USB for Windows XP 2003 or Vista?
Feb 2nd
Recently I purchased a Dell Mini 10v with Windows 7 starter edition. As most of you know, netbooks are not coming with any optical drive. USB takes of it’s role. Installing an operating system is hectic with netbook especially if it’s Windows XP. You’re blessed if you’ve the luxury of an external optical drive. But usually nobody would like to own and external big optical drive with the small netbooks.
When I purchased it from Japan it was pre-installed with Windows 7 Japanese version and I prepared the bootable Windows 7 USB drive using and installed using USB to DVD tool from Microsoft Store. It was painless and installation finished within few minutes.
Lately I inspired few my colleagues towards Dell Mini 10v and obviously the installing risk came to my shoulders( I never expected of it!) and they’ve not prefer to Install Windows 7 even I boasted about the quality security of the Win7.
I’ve tried different methods after Googling. One of the proven method was using BartPE which was little bit painful and I failed to Install it several times. Luckly I got another excellent tool called Novicorp WinToFlash which made all the tasks so easy. It’s so simple.
- Just download the Zip
- Start WinToFlash in Administrator mode (if you’re running Windows 7 or Windows Vista)
- Mount the ISO image or insert the DVD/CD to the optical drive
- Insert the USB drive
- Now Start the Wizard and select source drive and destination USB drive (take care to choose right path especially if any of your other USB drives are plugged in)
Wizard will prepare the USB and will finish it in few minutes
- Now insert the USB in your netbook and select the USB as the primary boot device. (In Dell System you can press F12 to select the boot device in the POST BIOS screen)
- First you’ve to choose the commandline option to install. once the files are finished copying the system will reboot and you’ve to choose the USB as first boot device. Now go for option 2 which spawn the remaining setup in the GUI mode.
- Once you finish, reboot( no need to select USB device as the primary boot device. select your HDD if you changed the option in BIOS). Now the system may report that HAL.dll was not found and failed to boot. If this issue comes you can see several debugging option. Just try each by each and check properly boot or not. Nothing special to do there. It will report some error and when we reboot, if the issue is solved you can simply boot in to the OS otherwise boot again from USB and select the next debug option. Try one by one until succeeded.
There are few issues I’ve faced with Windows XP install during USB install
The C: drive will most probably be occupied by the inserted USB drive. So your dream to install the OS in C: Drive will remain as a dream. I was little bit tricky and first I installed it in Drive E: and in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices I swapped the E: Drive with C: drive in my ambition to boot from it( I’ve done it according to Microsoft Guidance). Boot worked fine but it failed to display the login screen. I reinstalled again but this time, I made another boot USB disk and formatted the drive and created a primary partition( however it seems you can do it with Windows XP installation Windows itself. Format a drive once, reboot it may take place of the C drive. I’ve not tried it though). After that booted from Windows bootable USB. Now this can occupy another drive name as the partition was already existing there.
It may show you that format the USB device and install in it during the initial stage of the boot. You’ve to press ESC key then it will display the attached hard disk and it’s partition. Format it once again if needed or install straight in the new partition. For me installing from USB was damn slow even I used USB 2.0 device.
Now you’re done. Any queries, ask as comments.
Note that I’ve successfully tried only Windows XP. Windows 2003 and Windows Vista are the other options in the Novicorp WinToFlash tool.
Kudos to the team who created this excellent tool and I blame Microsoft for not providing an easy tool to install their OS.
Installing Windows 7 in Dell Mini 10v
Dec 28th
I’ve successfully installed both Windows 7 and Ubuntu Netbook Remix in my brand new Dell Mini 10v. Here I’m explaining about how to make a bootable USB stick to install Windows 7. This is quite simple but before getting this final solution, I’ve tried with many different tools to prepare the USB stick and it was desperately failed. Either they will not have any option to write into USB or the writing may have some kind of drawback which may result into a failed booting.
I’ve received the box pre-installed with Japanese version of Windows 7 Starter Edition. I’ve not opted for an external drive when I purchased. So I had prepared the image file using Magic ISO. Dumping in ISO image format is better as it’s a universally accepted format.
There are two methods to prepare the USB disk.
1. Using USB to DVD tool from Microsoft Store
Microsoft realized your needs and they’ve provided a safe method to prepare the bootable USB from ISO. Prepare the ISO image using magic disc. Download the tool from Microsoft website. Now things are pretty straight forward. Just go through the guided steps to create the bootable USB stick
Once you complete preparing the USB, reboot your computer and press F12 (for Dell Laptops only) in the POST screen to choose the boot device. From that opt for USB Storage Device. Go ahead with the simplest Windows Installation we’ve ever seen in Windows history.
2. Using diskpart and xcopy (or simple windows copying)
This step must be done very carefully as it may damage your own HDD if it used wrong. Do this at your own risk.
First you’ve to plugin the USB stick and open the command line tool diskpart from Run Window or from command prompt.
You can see a similar window as displayed above. Note that Windows Vista or Windows 7 may ask for administrator privilege to run this application. Do the following steps
- list disk – this will list the attached physical disks connected to the system
- select disk # – select the preferred disk. Here you must be very careful. Make sure that you’ve chosen the right disk. Otherwise you may lose your data. replace # the number listed ### column of list disk command
- clean – clear the configuration information
- create partition primary – Create the partition for the stick
- format fs=fat32 quick – note that if you’ve not opted for quick, you will have to wait till the OS finish the true formatting of entire disk.
- assign – assign a drive letter for the drive to access through explorer
- You’ve prepared a clean USB device. Now mount the ISO image or using magic disc or insert the DVD. Simply copy paste the contents of the folder to the prepared USB device. You can also use xcopy or robocopy if you’re preferring the command line tools.
- You can see a video demonstration of this in Microsoft Technet
The next step was to prepare the bootable USB stick from the and created the using my other personal computer to prepare the bootable USB drive. Reboot your computer and press F12 (for Dell Laptops only) in the POST screen to choose the boot device. From that opt for USB Storage Device.
note that the second method has failed many times even the USB started booting. I don’t know if it was the problem with my USB stick. Always try to it with the first method mention.
How to know the caps lock status in Dell Mini 10v?
Dec 27th
There are only two things emits light in Dell Mini 10v, the monitor and the power indicator LED. It’s doesn’t have the beauitful LEDs like other Dell notebooks.
The worst thing, is that we can’t know the status of caps lock. This is particularly makes problems when you type password as you can’t see the original text. You have to try the caps lock in some editable windows and back to the password field.
Even those Dell laptops which has all indicators including caps lock, it used to display ON/OFF status in a quick small message text on the right bottom side. With Dell Mini you can make use of this handy tool to know the current capslocks status.
The disadvantage is that it will be popped up only when we hit the caps lock key. It’s hard to know the current caps lock status without changing the current capslock state.
But it’s still better then a total blank
Download the system tools from Dell Mini 10v Driver Download Page. I’ve given direct link to Dell Caps Lock Application (this URL may changed by Dell in Future or on upgrade)
Once you finish installing this, you can see something has below on hitting the caps lock key.
ON – 
OFF – 
How to change Dell Mini 10v Function key mapping to normal mode?
Dec 26th
I’ve received my Dell Mini 10v and this is the first issue, I’ve faced while started working with it. I am a keyboard lover for most of the cases, if possible I will be using only my keyboard to work with softwares because it’s faster than using mouse and also I’m good at using it. 
Dell Mini has some problems with it’s function keys. It doesn’t have any dedicated function keys. It’s there in the top row of the keyboard but if you need to press F1-F12, you also need to hold down ‘fn’ key just left to the Windows Key. This quite bad and they’re deviating from the standard. Even in a point I was thinking about writing a keyboard filter driver to change the mapping as Mark Russinovich Wrote Ctrl2Cap driver.
Fortunately when I skimmed through the driver list of Dell Mini 10v on dell.com, I could find an application related to function keys. It hadn’t any good information about what it’s doing but still I wish to have a try to get rid of this problem.
Surprisingly it was the one I was seeking for. Just downloaded it from the Dell Website and installed.
Just enable the checkbox to make the function keys functions as in a normal keyboard.
You can download the driver by navigating to Dell.com Drivers page. Here’s I’m giving link to the corresponding driver but I’m not sure how long it will work as dell may frequently update the URL information.