Microsoft managed to get the Windows operating system on the ASUS Eee PC, but neither Windows XP Service Pack 3 nor Windows Vista Service Pack 1. Instead, Parag Garg, Program Manager in the Embedded Windows team, experimented with Windows XP Embedded and the Eee PC. The Eee PC comes with a 900MHz Intel Celeron Processor, a 7" LCD screen, 4GB SSD Storage and 512 RAM. Because of the small screen resolution and the limited capabilities of the hard drive, getting either the XP or Vista clients on the machine proved quite a task. To this date, Windows Vista was introduced on the Eee PC architecture only as an experiment.

"First we need to configure the ASUS system to boot from a USB drive, by default the ASUS is configured to boot from USB. I am using an M-Systems/Sandisk SSD with a USB Adaptor it shows up in the BIOS as a hard drive, so I must change a setting in the BIOS so it boots the SSD first," Garg said. "Insert your USB Drive into the ASUS System, and then boot into the BIOS by pressing F2. Go to the Boot menu, and then to boot priority, make sure the Removable Disk is set as the first boot device. Now under the Boot Menu, go under Hard Disk Drives, and set the USB as the 1st Boot Device. After you have made these changes, it’s time to reboot the PC and boot into WinPE."

The nest step is to use a bootable USB WinPE 2.1 image and then TAP.exe in order to install XPe on the ASUS Eee PC. Garg has all the instructions designed to permit users to build a bootable USB WinPE 2.1 image of Windows XP Embedded right here.

At the same time, ASUS has started making available the first Eee machines preloaded with Windows XP Home. The computers originally designed for Xandros Linux have started being delivered via BestBuy for $399.99. Last week, Microsoft announced extended support and commitment to its OEM partners by prolonging the availability of Windows XP Home Edition until June 30, 2010, for ultra-low-cost PCs.