Tuesday 7 January 2014

Advent 4213 installing clean Windows XP Professional SP3 from USB


So I bought a small notebook from a friend at work. My plan to use it for data logging and OBD diagnostics.
It came with Linux Mint but really needed XP but no discs supplied and the original recovery partition long gone. Although I have a copy of Windows XP somewhere I couldnt find it!

Heres the original specification

Advent 4213
CPU Intel Atom N270 (1.6Ghz)
Memory 1GB DDRII - Hard Drive 160GB
Web Cam 1.3 MegaPixel

Connectivity 3G / Bluetooth /WiFi
Windows XP Home edition

So I went looking for a (non legitimate) copy of XP, ideally XP Pro with SP3.
Lo and behold I found the version below which has all the updates added and options to install lots of apps i would need anyway.

Windows XP Professional SP3 32-bit - Black Edition 2013.12.16
Easily found on your favourite filesharing site (i used piratebay)

Next download http://www.winsetupfromusb.com/
Follow the instructions in the XP pack to create a bootable USB stick

i used a normal 2GB usb stick

you must format the usb as FAT32 format (use the HP Format button within winsetupfromusb)
I tried NTFS and got hal.dll errors etc first time around until I switched to FAT32 format

With the usb stick prepped, place it in the advent 4213 and switch on  holding F11 (to trigger boot options)
Select usb stick (in fact mine had the right boot order so would have chosen USB first)

do step 1 , let it reboot then do step 2

Once windows setup is running, I chose to delete all partitions and created single new for windows (full disc size)

leave the usb stick in
I got an missing parameters error, but chose ignore and it continued ok.(i think this contributed to my boot.ini issues below)

Windows XP is now installed (whoo hoo) , but first time I tried to boot withe the usb removed i got error!
In order to fix this I had to ...
enable viewing of system files as a folder option
edit boot.ini to match expected

post below can help with some info
http://forums.techguy.org/windows-xp/905775-cant-boot-windows-xp-without.html

At this point windows has only generic drivers used, so some functions dont work or are low res (e.g. screen resolution is odd)
Nows the time to download and update the drivers, which can be found links below

http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/advent/laptop/4213.htm

key page is this one http://www.adventcomputers.co.uk/product-download-select/155

ADVENT 4213 10.2Inch with 3G Downloads
Type Name Size Download
Driver 3G drivers for Advent 4313 3.19 MB download
Driver Audio drivers for Advent 4313 24.8 MB download
Driver Card reader drivers for Advent 4213 4.48 MB download
Driver Chipset drivers for Advent 4213 2.07 MB download
Driver Connection manager Advent 4213 82.79 MB download
Driver F6 installation fix for Advent 4213 193.92 KB download
Driver Graphics drivers for Advent 4213 17.3 MB download
Driver IMSM drivers for Advent 4313 20.81 MB download
Driver LAN drivers for Advent 4213 4.52 MB download
Driver Modem drivers for Advent 4213 3.94 MB download
Driver OSD drivers for Advent 4213 635.65 KB download
Driver WLAN drivers for Advent 4213 29.21 MB download

Click to download them.

For each that you need, extract and run the .exe file (id try the graphics driver first so it looks much nicer)

install antivirus etc

have fun :-)

it boots pretty quickly for XP and runs great.
Next up to try and install ELMConfig and change options on the wifes Kuga.........

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