[desone01]

I just purchased a secondhand Dell Mini 10 on eBay for $104AU. It's in as new condition. I presume it's a Dell Mini 1010. It just says Inspiron Mini 10 on the bottom. When I received it the hard drive was loose in it's place with the single holding screw missing. I couldn't get the 160gb hard drive to work properly. In any case the windows XP system was corrupted. At this stage I don't know if it is damaged or not. I had a spare Seagate 250gb 5400 drive so I fitted that.


I have never had any previous experience in loading the operating system from a usb stick. I made a ISO file from a Dell XP Home Edition cd which I already had. This agrees with the licence sticker on the bottom.


First of all I used ISO TO USB freeware program to create the bootable flash drive from the ISO file. It didn't work and each attempt of loading windows an error missing or corrupted hal.dll file occurred. After some quick Google searches I then used a program Win to Flash the create the bootable usb drive. This was written directly from the cd with no need for an iso file to be created first. This worked and Windows XP Home Edition was installed successfully - well sort of. I went to the Dell Mini 10 drivers site and downloaded all the drivers for XP. I installed all the drivers which would install. Some wouldn't install on XP eventhough Dell said the drivers were for XP. I then decided to install all the XP Service Packs and Updates to see if this fixed the problem of four yellow question marks in my XP device manager. It didn't.


The drivers I can't install are:-


Audio Device on High Definition Audio Bus
Dell Wireless 5530 HSPA Mobile Broadband Minicard Device
Integrated Webcam
Video Controller (VGA Compatible)


I would appreciate any help in rectifying these problems.

[desone01]

I decided to download the Mini 10 drivers from the Dell FTP web site. I reloaded all the likely drivers. I appears to have worked except for the web cam. I still can't get it to work in Windows XP.

---------- Post added at 09:48 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:18 AM ----------

The problem with the web cam is solved. I reinstalled the driver manually through the device manager.

[desone01]

It would appear that Dell Support need to update the drivers on their HTML web site. I would suggest that anyone wanting to download the correct drivers for Windows XP use the Dell ftp web site. The Creative web cam driver won't load from the downloaded program. You should use the device manager in XP and install the driver from the Dell/drivers/ R209510/CTDriver on your hard drive AFTER the failed install attempt.

[lswartz]

Wow! You found your solutions fast. You might consider Win 7 as XP support ends next month. Win 7 is a lot faster as well. If you have no applications which require Windows you might consider Ubuntu, just as fast & free too. I don't have any experience with Win 8.

I use a Mini 10v out and about, but mostly this Mini 9 (seems to be indestructible) with out a battery which died months ago.

[desone01]

Originally Posted by lswartz

Wow! You found your solutions fast. You might consider Win 7 as XP support ends next month. Win 7 is a lot faster as well. If you have no applications which require Windows you might consider Ubuntu, just as fast & free too. I don't have any experience with Win 8.

I use a Mini 10v out and about, but mostly this Mini 9 (seems to be indestructible) with out a battery which died months ago.

I have thought about putting Windows 7 32 bit on it but with only 1gb of ram I think it would crawl.
I see some forum members have upgraded the motherboard to the Ubuntu model and put 2gb of ram in them.


I find the Mini 10 mousepad to be a real pain so I use a mini mouse with it.


I also purchased a Mini 1018 which has a proper mousepad and will take 2gb of ram. It's a shame Dell cut corners with this model and reduced the number of usb ports from three to two and took away the microphone connection.

[lswartz]

I did put 2 GB RAM in my Mini 9 but Ubuntu didn't really need it & I honestly couldn't tell the difference. For me Win XP bogs down in about a year. A fresh install fixes that nicely so you should be OK for some time. I do have Win 7 on an old desktop (maybe 10 years) that is on 24/7. It has 2 GB of RAM & runs without a problem recording TV shows for later viewing.

I have the same problem with the Mini 10v mousepad. Microsoft had a nice little mouse that folds up which solves the problem.

Dell did OK for me on the price, my Mini 9 was about $190 delivered & the 10v wasn't much more. It would have been nice to get a little more

[gdsmit1]

Originally Posted by desone01

I have thought about putting Windows 7 32 bit on it but with
I find the Mini 10 mousepad to be a real pain so I use a mini mouse with it.

Yeah, I had the same issue with my mini 10. But after using it a bit I got used to the touch pad.

I've had this mini 10 for about 5 or 6 years now. I bought it to take on some trips for work and I didn't want to carry that 15.4" screen laptop. I got it with Ubuntu on it and have since put several other Linux distributions on it. Most recently I installed Linux Mint 16 and it's still working great.

These are great little machines and well worth the price.

[desone01]

Originally Posted by gdsmit1

Yeah, I had the same issue with my mini 10. But after using it a bit I got used to the touch pad.

I've had this mini 10 for about 5 or 6 years now. I bought it to take on some trips for work and I didn't want to carry that 15.4" screen laptop. I got it with Ubuntu on it and have since put several other Linux distributions on it. Most recently I installed Linux Mint 16 and it's still working great.

These are great little machines and well worth the price.

I now have three of these machines with another one coming in the post.


My first purchase was a Mini 1010 and then came the Mini 1018 and more recently a Mini 1012. I have another 1018 coming in the mail. I don't like the pink colour of the one I have.


Of all the machines I like the 1012 the best. It is the best optioned with two mini pci express slots. I intend to install a Broadcom BCM 70015 card in it.


I don't know whether to update the screen to the higher resolution 1366x768 or not.