Introduction
I recently bought one of Dell’s new Mini 9 netbooks as my girlfriend’s Christmas present. To save some cash I got it with Ubuntu pre-installed. If this were my machine I’d just keep Ubuntu on there, but she will almost certainly hate it. So, this guide is intended for people who don’t have Windows XP installed from the factory, so we don’t have that nice folder with all the drivers to port over to Vista. Of course a lot of this process applies to anyone who wants Vista on the Mini 9, so I’m happy for anyone to get some help.
The guy over at http://dellmini9.blogspot.com has already documented his Mini 9 experience. He’s gotten Vista (and now even a beta of Windows 7) running on his machine, and his site has a lot of great tips. I will do my best to combine the tips I found useful from that site with this particular process. His install was from XP so he was able to skip a few steps. Please add any comments for any mistakes I will certainly make. I’ll do my best to update the guide to accommodate for as many situations as possible. Read on for the guide…
Update: My girlfriend loves the Mini 9 (although I’m pretty sure she was expecting it after all my hints.) Go Dell!