I know there are alot of people out there running OSX on MAC's. (Virtualbox also works in linux).
We also cannot quite get rid of Windows just yet due to that OSX cannot be installed on PCs (legally).
This is a guide on how to proceed with installing Windows XP on the excellent netbook Acer Aspire One. There are more guides out there but this guide is how to do it using a Mac! As you all know the AA1 (and plenty other netbooks such as, Dell mini 9, EEE PC and HP mini) doesn
t have an optical drive so what we need to do is transfer the XP installation cd to a USB stick.
If you already have a PC running Windows you can skip the first part in this guide.
This guide does not condone any pi
racy materials and is written for people owning a XP license so dont write here asking for product keys and such.
Step 1: (If you have a windows pc go to step 2).
First you will need to get your hands on Sun's virtual ma
chine software called Virtualbox. Click
here to get it.
OR if you have a second partition using bootcamp you can just boot up windows and go to step 2.
Install virtualbox and install windows. The important thing here is to enable USB passthrough so go to settings for your virtualbox and enable USB. Insert your stick into your mac and unmount it in OSX, then you can go to the menu and mount the USB
stick in windows. Maybe I'm explaining a bit fast but I'm currently at work and cant explain in detail. Ask questions if you fail this part.
Part 2: Ok, so when you have windows up and running and your USB-stick is mounted you are ready to go. First, you need some software.
Download
usb_prep8 and extract all the files to a place you c
an find them easily e.g your Desktop. Download
PEtoUSB and put the .exe file in usb_prep8 folder. You also need to download
bootsect. Extract to a separ
ate folder.
Ok, now you are redo to begin the actual steps to transfer your windows XP cd (or .iso) to a USB-stick.
Part 3: Launch the file usb_prep8.cmd and you will get a command window.
Press any key to continue! You will now get a PeToUSB window, just click START in that one.
The program will now format your USB-stick. Breathe!
Part 4: When PeToUSB is finnished (DONT CLOSE ANY WINDOWS) you will need to write the bootsector. This is done by the bootsect.exe program that you extracted earlier. Press Start Menu and then press run and enter "cmd". Use cd to go to the bootesct folder where bootsect.exe resides... type bootsect.exe /nt52 G: Where G stands for the USB drives letter, you maybe need to change this. Hit enter and you will get a confirmation. Close that cmd window.
Now go back to PeToUSB and close that window. If you have done correct now you will be presented with a menu.
Part 5: Now you press menu choice 1 and chose path to your XP cd or Deamon-tools mounted .iso file. Press 3 and enter the letter of your USB-stick you previously wrote in part 4. Now press 4 and start the process. Answer yes to the questions after the file copying has ended.
You are now done!
Part 6: Make sure your computer BIOS has set the USB drive on the first boot option. Boot the AA1 or whatever netbook you use with the USB-stick and choose TXT mode installation and at the next boot use Graphical mode.
Make sure to use the FAT32 filesystem if you have the 8Gb SSD version or it will be very sluggish!
Questions? Shoot!
