Need help installing windows on aspire one

xpac5896 · 13 Dec 2015

A friend of mine was given an Aspire One D270. This thing is totally screwed up. Somebody installed Win 7 Ultimate on it, when it first boots you get into windows but the help screen pops up and you can't get rid of it, you can move the pointer but if you try to open anything it goes nuts, you can shut it down but when it boots up it asks what operating system you want to start.
I did some searching trying to find out how to boot to a USB to reformat the drive. I got into the BIOS but have no idea which USB port is which, I can't even find a user manual for this thing. I want to reformat the drive and install Win 7 premium but I understand thsi thing was sold wit WIN 7 starter, whatever that is.
Please, can anybody help me here

ThrashZone · 13 Dec 2015

Hi,
I would suggest using a 32 bit install of what ever 7 home premium if you have a unused key for it,
SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

If not I would get a win-7 starter edition and use the key on the machine to activate 7 starter.
ISO image

xpac5896 · 13 Dec 2015

I just want to say thanks for the info. The pages were very helpful and gave me the information I needed. Never knew that this website ever existed, I do now and will definitely use it in the future. The only thing I didn't know is that, according to the web site, you had to format a USB to NTFS to do a 32bit install. I always thought that if you used a USB and was going to do a 32bit install that the USB would also have to be formatted in 32bit. I normally just format the hard drives in whatever is being installed but in this case the laptop I'm trying to fix doesn't have a CD drive just USB ports so this is new to me.
Anyway, thanks again and have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

ThrashZone · 13 Dec 2015

Hi
Option 2 using rufus will do everything for you once you have an iso to use of the proper bit or version
USB Windows 7 Installation Key Drive - Create

Come back anytime :)
Cheers.

ThrashZone · 14 Dec 2015

xpac5896 - Mon, 14 Dec 2015 20:49:23 -0600 said:

This Acer One I'm trying to fix came with the Win 7 Starter version 32bit. it only has 1gig of memory, max 2gig and an Intel Atom N2600/1.6Ghz processor, it supposedly can run 64bit, at least that's what the spec sheet has.
I created a boot USB with Win 7 Starter on it and it booted just fine. I noticed that when I got to the screen where the you can format the hd, I noticed that there was a 100 meg partition, I was thinking that this was a partition like a restore partition and I didn't want that, anyway, I deleted the partition and reformatted the HD.
Got to the screen to install Windows and everything was working fine until I got an error message telling me that Windows could not create a System partition, didn't know that a 32bit system required a System partition. I am at a loss at this stage because apparently Win 7 Starter does not have the ability to create a System partition, at least I'm guessing that it doesn't, I really don't know because I've never even heard of a Starter OS. Do you have any ideas as to how I can do this thing?
I've never installed an OS without the help of a CD and doing this with a USB is totally new to me.

Hi,
Well as far as 64 bit goes I would not use it with only 2gb's of ram so stick with 32 bit unless you can add more at least 4gb's

Option 2 should give you a way to enter command prompt and clean the disk properly,
System Recovery Options

Then you need to align the SSD and define an active partition on it. You use an elevated Command Prompt with the following commands:

Diskpart
List disk
Select disk n (where n is the number that was given for your SSD in List disk)
Clean
Create partition primary align=1024
Format fs=ntfs quick
Active (assuming you want to install an OS)
Exit

Quote from this tutorial,
SSD - Install and Transfer the Operating System