[holmes4]

I installed Windows 8 (32-bit) on my Mini 9. The install went quickly and without problems. It found my wireless card (an Intel 5300) and the graphics seemed to work fine.

However, I can't get any of the application "tiles" to do anything. I click on them and they "respond" by moving a bit. I can right click and see options to unpin or uninstall. The tiles for desktop and control panel work. Very curious.

Will have to play with this some more.

[holmes4]

Apparently the problem with Metro apps is that Metro requires 1024x768 minimum resolution, which many netbooks do not have. I have seen suggestions for how to enable scaling, but they require having the Intel video drivers loaded. I tried to install the Intel Windows 7 driver, but during the install the screen went black and stayed that way.

Have not yet rebooted to see where I can go from there.

[holmes4]

Finally got it working - am posting from Win8 now. The steps are:
1. Install the Intel Graphics Driver from here. Note - when I did this, the screen went blank and did not recover. I did a hard power down (press and hold power key) and rebooted. It was fine then.
2. Run regedit. Find all instances of the registry value Display1_DownScalingSupported. For each one, double click on the value and change it from 0 to 1.
3. Reboot
4. Go to the desktop. Right click on the desktop and select Screen Resolution. Change it to 1024x768.

You can now run Metro apps. Good luck figuring out the UI in some of them, though right clicking sometimes brings up options, or clicking at the bottom or top of the screen.

[smileyguy]

Originally Posted by holmes4

Finally got it working - am posting from Win8 now. The steps are:
1. Install the Intel Graphics Driver from here. Note - when I did this, the screen went blank and did not recover. I did a hard power down (press and hold power key) and rebooted. It was fine then.
2. Run regedit. Find all instances of the registry value Display1_DownScalingSupported. For each one, double click on the value and change it from 0 to 1.
3. Reboot
4. Go to the desktop. Right click on the desktop and select Screen Resolution. Change it to 1024x768.

You can now run Metro apps. Good luck figuring out the UI in some of them, though right clicking sometimes brings up options, or clicking at the bottom or top of the screen.

Thanks for the instructions.

I find that Win 8 is quite slow on the Mini 9... is there a way to speed it up? The apps takes time to load.

[holmes4]

I have found the speed to be fine. My Win7 install had been slow but I attribute that to the SSD having too much garbage. Any new install is an improvement.

The Metro apps take a bit to start up but after that they are ok.

[jds394]

Thanks for the tips here about the Downscaling. I think it is impressive to get windows 8 working with all its features on the Mini 9.

The trouble with the downscaling is that the only offered screen resolutions have an aspect ratio of 4x3. Does anyone know if there is a way to set resolutions with the 16 x 9 aspect ratio of the Mini 9's screen?

Josh

[JoeinDallas]

I was attempting to install Windows 8 on my Mini9 with it's 8G SSD and I get an error that 16G is the minimum to install Windows 8 - is there a way around this?

[somebody]

Originally Posted by JoeinDallas

I was attempting to install Windows 8 on my Mini9 with it's 8G SSD and I get an error that 16G is the minimum to install Windows 8 - is there a way around this?

I installed Win 8.1 on my Dell Mini 9 after reducing it using WinReducer8.1. The installed size is 7.5GB on my 16GB SSD. Don't know if the reduced iso too would complain.

[holmes4]

Not that I am aware of. 8GB is really too small to run Windows, especially anything after XP.

[Aseries]

I have installed and run every OS I could find on my MINI 9 and yesterday I added Windows 8 Beta to the list. I installed it from a flash drive and it took about as long as Windows 7. Performance is very good. I was running XBUNTU before the W8B effort. Here is my relative performance scale, fastest first:
Windows 8 Beta
XBUNTU
Windows 7
Windows XP
Windows 8 only uses 10 GB as opposed to 12 GB for W7.
So far W8 does not like the native screen resolution of the Mini 9, 600 X 800.
This is not enough to install any Apps. I have my Mini 9 connected through a KVM switch to my desktop hardware which includes a 24 inch LCD.
I finally discovered the Second Display Settings under devices, selected Second Display Only and it jumped to 1680 X 1050.
I just installed the Kindle App from the STORE.
Got to go, More later.