Last week Microsoft introduced the new Windows 7 to the humble consumer and since I’ve known about the increased performance over Windows Vista from the Beta program it was to to send the installation of Windows XP on my netbook into retirement for good.
The Atom processor of the S10e doesn’t support 64 Bit operating systems and the onboard graphic isn’t the fastest either. And since I rarely store any data directly on the netbook I won’t need the BitLocker feature, so I went for a solid 32 Bit Home Premium version. These are available as System Builder Version from 69€ to 89€ at retail shops (perfectly legal according to German law). The only differences to the regular retail version is the missing 64 Bit DVD and the lack of Microsoft support.
The first obstacle was the DVD. The IdeaPad, like any netbook, doesn’t have an internal optical drive. So I have two options:
- use an external USB DVD drive
- copy the DVD onto a USB thumb drive (at least a 4GB size)
I went with option 2 because I didn’t want to buy a new DVD drive.
Before I started to copy I had to prepare the thumb drive using some command. Open the Command Prompt (CMD) as an Administrator (important!).
c:>diskpart
DISKPART>lis dis
DISKPART>sel dis 3 (3 was my thumb drive)
DISKPART>lis par
DISKPART>sel par 1 (1 usually the only partition on the thumb drive)
DISKPART>format fs=FAT32 LABEL=”Windows 7” QUICK OVERRIDE
DISKPART>active
DISKPART>exit
Your thumb drive should now be empty and most importantly bootable.
Now insert the Windows 7 DVD into your DVD drive (D:) on your PC and copy the content to the thumb drive (G:) using Robocopy. (use drive letters that match your configuration)
c:>Robocopy d: g: *.* /e /copyall
This could take a while, depending on the writing speed of your thumb drive. Now you can boot the netbook with the memory stick and start the installation process. I still had the original recovery partition which I wanted to keep. I had to choose custom setup to select the system partition for installation. The automatic mode went into a menu loop because the recovery partition (the first partition on the disk) was too small to install Windows 7. A simple error or warning message would have helped at this point.
The main installation was done within 30 minutes.
From good tradition the first thing I did was to run Windows Update. It found only 9 updates, most of which where device drivers. but still I missed some functionality.
- Microphone
- Bluetooth
- Energiemanagement
- Multi Touch function of the touchpad
Lenovo doesn’t provide any Windows 7 drivers to the IdeaPad S10e, since the device is currently phasing out and is only sold with Windows XP. But the new IdeaPad S10-2 is sold with Windows 7 and besides some minor differences it’s practically the same hardware.
Here’s a list of needed device drivers:
- Lenovo Energy Management Driver
- Synaptics Pointing Device Driver
- Realtek High Definition Audio Driver
- Intel Onboard Graphics Driver
- Broadcom Bluetooth Driver
For the 3G version of the S10e you’ll need additional UMTS card drivers. There’s a complete list of all working drivers and tools at the ThinkPad Forum (only German content, but the drivers are available in Englisch).
Update: I just found a video tutorial
Click here for Part 2