Friday, July 2, 2010

Acer Aspire One SSD How to Speed up Windows XP

How to speed up an Acer Aspire One AOA 110 NetBook with the slow SSD (Solid State Hard Drive) with Windows XP

As usual I am late to the party again... But I had the opportunity to pick up the tiny Aspire One for cheap. I wrangled this little NetBook to do some more testing with BackTrack 4.

Originally the Acer Aspire One shipped with a 16GB (small) Solid State Hard Drive loaded with Linpus Lite Linux operating system. Amazingly enough the Atom Processor and the Solid State Hard Drive combined with the 1GB of installed memory is lighting fast with this modified version of Linux.

Boot times are almost immediate and the GUI comes right up. Internet surfing was a breeze and setting up the network on my Wi-Fi was simple.

But if you have read anything from my blog you know that's not enough for me ... I have to change that ... Now I don't have the time or energy right now to turn this little Acer Aspire One in to an Hacintosh.... But I will load XP on it and dual boot with BackTrack 4.



Thinking this will be easy and fast to setup .... I hooked up my trusty USB to IDE/SATA



to an internal DVD-RW drive I have hanging around for this very reason.. ** Side note if you are doing any continuous mod's or repairs to NoteBook's, NetBook's, Laptops, or even desktops you really should pick up one of these they are cheap from your local Fry's or MicroCenter they should be in the range of 15$ USD.

Well loading Windows XP Home on the Acer Aspire One AOA110 was not all that bad time wise. But when I actually booted in to Windows XP the realization set in....

The SSD (Solid State Hard Drive) in the Aspire One is

SUPPER SLOW

it took me almost a full day to download and install updates and patches from Microsoft.

This just will not do... I had already done all of the normal stuff to clean up Windows XP Home Edition on the Aspire One AOA110 like:

Turning off System Restore
Turning off Pagine file
Disabling unneeded services
Fixing Cache and system temp files ...

But all of that did minimal help to speed up the Aspire One AOA110.

What I did find that made the NetBook usable and almost as fast as it was with the modified version of Linux was an Open Source Project called FlashFire. Remember Open Source Projects are usually FREE to use ...

BUT REMEMBER **** just like this Blog is free *** the creators of these Projects put a lot of time and energy in to them ... so if you find it useful DONATE.. Thks :)

After loading FlashFire on the Acer Aspire One AOA110 this little NetBook sprung to life and ran like a champion. Web browsing and doing all of the normal things you would do with Windows became very fast .. It was an amazing transformation..

Now some of the start times and program loads will still be a bit tedious with the still very slow SSD on the Aspire One AOA110 but this will make these little machines a very useful part of your life.

From their web site.
- FlashFire is software for Solid-State Drives
- FlashFire uses host RAM to enhance random write performance of a SSD
- FlashFire is especially useful for the system using low-end SSDs




Good Luck in all of your endeavors....


2 comments:

super useful, wish I stumbled upon this earlier rather than spending hours trying to find solutions to a slow aoa110 win xp.

Lone Star Custom Lapel Pins

Lone Star Custom Lapel Pins
Veteran Managed Lone Star Pins are creators of custom lapel pins. We offer a free digital how to PDF on our site, Free Artwork, and quote. Contact us today for your proof and quote.

Share

Twitter Delicious Facebook Digg Stumbleupon Favorites More