Apr 10, 2008
Howto: Use EeePC XP in VirtualBox
BY DERRICK SOBODASH
f you have been watching the torrent sites, you may have seen a “Windows XP for Asus EEE PC” floating around. Its first edition came out in January, but a new “2.0″ was released this week. For those reluctant to sail over to a certain bay of pirates, I will summarize.
The “EeeXP” carries a 45MB RAM footprint one booted and requires only 289MB of disk space, bringing it into the range of Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition. Not only that, but it promises boot times so fast that the XP splash screen can only scroll its blue loading bar once before displaying the desktop.
Seeking to reinstall my cluttered Windows XP virtual disk that was up to a whopping 5GB, I decided to give this one a whirl using innotek’s VirtualBox on my clunky old Gateway laptop. The results are staggering.
So strong, so powerful!
While I have not bothered to count the pases of the loading indicator, my virtual machine gets me to a functional Windows XP desktop in less than 5 seconds after fading out from the innotek BIOS splash. That is incredibly fast given this is taking place on a virtual partition on a comparably slow laptop hard disk.
The OS has all the features I could want in a virtual machine and none of the bloat. Sure, some services are missing, but I usually do not require complex network management in a virtual box. I use it to run software that does not run in Wine, that runs poorly in Wine or to access my bank, which stupidly requires better ActiveX than IEs4Linux can provide.
If this is why you use a virtual machine, I strongly suggest you give this new XP build a whirl.
Preparing to install
Setup is fairly straightforward, but the lack of all non-Eee-related drivers can be a bit of a hang up.
You will need the innotek additions CD, as well as the Via AC’97 Vinyl Audio Codec, distributed in “Vinyl_AudioCodec_V550a.zip.” Search on Google for a link. I tried a lot of AC’97 drivers that all crashed XP: this was the only one that worked.
This will get everything except one “unknown device” working. There are some problems with USB additions, and you may need a full Windows XP CD on hand to resolve any driver issues should you connect a USB device into the virtual machine.
You will also need a full Windows XP CD if you want to use 120dpi fonts, or to enable Arabic or East Asian language support. I will cover how to install these at the end, in case you are unfamiliar. I have not managed to enable a Chinese or Japanese IME, but innotek’s Shared Clipboard feature will render this useless, since I can type in my Linux OS using SCIM, then copy and paste that text into the Windows XP virtual machine.
You will need innotek’s VirtualBox for this guide. If you use Ubuntu, a simple `apt-get install virtualbox` will work.
Creating the virtual machine
Load up VirtualBox and click New. Create a new Windows XP system with a fixed-size hard disk. I think 2GB is a fair size, unless you have a lot to load. Remember, you can always create and attach a second hard disk for games. This is just for Windows and your core applications.
After it is made, select the hard disk and click Settings. Increase the base memory to at least 256MB. If you plan on using photo editing software like Photoshop or Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo, 640MB may be more reasonable. Increase the video memory to 16MB.
In the CD/DVD-ROM page, check the Mount CD/DVD option and select your ISO of EEE_XP_MINI_1.0. You will need to add it to VirtualBox’s list of mountable ISOs. If you have burned the image, insert it in your CD-ROM drive and select to mount the host drive.
The install will begin immediately. Create a new partition and be sure to use a FAT filesystem instead of NTFS. NTFS uses many advanced disk writes which will severely bog down a virtual machine and really punish that section of your disk. FAT also ensures you get more space.
It is worth noting that this stripped down XP does not support defragmenting. You will need to install other defragmenting software, or just not do anything to fragment your drive. The primary drive should be a one-shot deal, and not somewhere you will constantly move files onto and off of.
The drive is also missing some of the network features and will not let you map a network drive to a letter. However, you probably will not need to do this. More on this issue later.
Setup will automatically continue, enter user info and eventually dump you to the desktop. This XP does not support advanced skinning, so you will be limited to the Windows Classic look — hardly a bad thing, since speed matters in virtual machines and those themes waste a lot of RAM.
Once at the desktop, click Devices->Unmount and remove your EeeXP CD-ROM. Now insert the VirtualBox Guest Additions disk. Open My Computer, navigate to the disk and begin installing the guest additions. This will allow the mouse to pass between the virtual machine and your desktop without forced capturing.
Reboot.
Wow, that’s fast, isn’t it?
Next, right click My Computer and click Properties. Go to the second tab and open the Device Manager. You will see several missing devices. This is because this XP comes with no drivers except what the EeePC has in hardware.
To get our network up, re-insert the Guest Additions disk. Right click on the Ethernet Controller, then the Driver tab and then click Update Driver. In the wizard, say you have a place to look for it, and tell the machine to search in D:\AMD_PCnet.
Reboot.
Congrats, you driver is working and now it is time to share some folders. Typically, I share ~/Shared. Drop your AC’97 driver in this folder and unzip it — this XP does not come with Zipped Folders.
Open My Computer and go to the address bar. Type “My” and click on “My Network Places” in the drop-down. Double click the Whole Network icon, then click on the VirtualBox network. Drag and drop the “Shared” folder onto your desktop and rename it to something less ugly.
Double click your new icon and make sure you see the AC’97 drivers. Go back to Device Manager and repeat the process, this time picking the A1u550a folder as the location of your driver.
Congrats, sound is working and I have no idea what the last “Unknown driver” is. So far, I have not needed it.
Extra stuff
If you have a full Windows XP CD, you can place it in your drive now for a few more features. After inserting the drive, re-mount the drive in VirtualBox.
Right click the Desktop and pick Properties, then go to the last Tab and enter advanced settings. Change your font dpi to 120dpi and click Apply, then OK. The 120dpi fonts will be installed to your virtual machine.
For Arabic or East Asian languages, open Control Panel and select the Regional & Language Settings icon. In the second tab, check whichever languages you wish to install. It will copy related fonts from your full Windows XP disc.
My boot time seemed to slow down by 1 or 2 seconds after adding these fonts, but your mileage may vary. At this point you should have a working EeePC virtual machine with networking and sound, and with that, this guide is complete.
Great article! I’ve been looking for a streamlined XP version to run in Virtualbox for ages. Thanks a lot.
A pleasure to look at, go on with this! Thanks!