ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Forum- Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Installed, Everything Is FAST Now!

Yesterday I spent about 4 long, tedious hours installing Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit in my 1201N for earnest, just decided I'd had enough of the '32-bit OS Blues'. Post installation my 1201N is quick responding, no more "lagtime" between the keystroke and the execution of a letter or word, or two or three...the slow typing issue had become unbearable for me personally, and I am sooo glad I have stopped using the 32-bit factory OS!

The OEM installation of Windows 7 HP 32-bit leaves a lot to be desired, and it's full of Asus bloatware which slows the computer down a LOT. How many Asus utilities are there that are installed anyway, OEM, nine (9)? I think so! None of it is needed, save for the BIOS updater tool, and I figure my BIOS is where I want it right now anyway, it's not going to change unless they legalize 8GB RAM perhaps...then I might re-install the BIOS update tool alone, but for now none of that stuff is installed.

I don't have'Dr. EEE,' and all his little friends...they are history now!

Perhaps the most lengthy thing I did was download the RealTek Audio Drivers for 64-bit OS, and that was only because the web site was abysmally slow...like 15kb/sec download speed! So that took forever, otherwise things went smoothly, if a bit slow and deliberate, as I had 26 major installs apart from the OS itself, drivers and various important software, like the hot key driver, the Touch Pad, and BlueTooth which is so important for me as I utilize it for both my mouse and file transfers.

I had an "old friend" help me out when I got stuck, with no nVidia Chipset driver or the Mainboard driver 64-bit, and it's called Driver Magician. This is a specialty software that I subscribe to annually, cost is like $24.99 a year, and the utility will find drivers for anything, anything at all really! Invaluable tool! Anyway, Magician found the chipset and board drivers in about 5 seconds when I queried the utility about anything that "was left" that I didn't have 64-bit drivers for, and BAM! Instant gratification...it located those drivers at the nVidia web site and set up the downloads, and I was d o n e with driver madness...64-bit that is.

It helps if you make a list of things you are going to need, so here you go if you want to do the same thing I did yesterday....two things are obvious right now after using the 1201N all evening post-installation: 1) everything is faster, BETTER! Especially the GUI and typing 2) everything that was installed works 100%, and I don't need anything else to make things better, they are much, much better than with the 32-bit OEM Asus Win 7 HP install...that just sucked rotten eggs!

Here's all the drivers that you'll need, and I indicate 32-bit where indicated, everything else is 64-bit from the nVidia website, RealTek, or Driver Magician:

64-nVidia ION Driver
64-RealTek Wireless LAN Driver
64-RealTek HD Audio Driver
64-nVidia Video Driver (VGA)
64-Atheros Ethernet Driver
64-nVidia Mainboard Driver (chipset)
64-nVidia HDMI Audio

Asus 32-bit Drivers and Software from System Recovery DVD-ROM

Hot Keys
Touch Pad
TMT3-Media Theatre 3 (if you want HD video codecs!)
LivCam/YouCam
BlueTooth
SHE
Boingo (optional)
Font Resizer (optional)

Adobe: Acrobat Reader 9.0.3 and Flash Beta 10.1.5.5x
Firefox 3.6 64-bit from Mozilla.com--my optional web browser

I used these optional helpers to get things straightened out 100% (!)

WhatinStartup Utility
Logitech Setpoint v4.2b2.x.x (for Bluetooth mouse)
Glary Registry Cleaner Utility (found 274 Registry Errors and fixed them all)
Driver Magician (not free, sorry, but the best!)

In addition to make the package complete, I installed Trend Micro Internet Security Pro,
iTunes and QuickTime 64-bit 9.x; HD Tune Pro, Epson Network Print Utility for Workforce 310 64-bit, and after that, I was done! But for mandatory Windows updates, of course...which took another 2.5 hours after all was said and done.

Now to be candid and honest about things, I did NOT flatten the HD, ie format it 100%, in fact I kept the OEM FAT-32 partition intact on my 320GB HD, *just in case* the machine would have to go into Asus for some warranty work in it's little lifetime ahead. I can always reinstall the crappy OEM 32-bit OS by hitting F9 yah? Right! Anyway, the 64-bit OS is installed on the 285GB 'C' Partition, right over the old OS, just paved that sucker good!

That's about the whole story, and sorry if this duplicates any other posts about doing this. Oh, of course, I did not tell you where I got the 64-bit OS from! Hah-Hah! I have a 3-User Family Pack of Win 7 Home Premium that has been sitting idle here since October 2009, just one of those got used on an OEM PC build of mine, so I cheated I guess, did not go through the download from Digital River.com and go through all that crapola with an ISO Images etc etc....I installed from my external DVD+/-RW optical drive with a nice, new 64-bit OS DVD!

Such is life, some folks have all the luck, yes? Well I think that we make all our own luck and I do encourage any/all of you sitting on the fence about doing this sort of thing...DO IT! Your 1201N will love you for it, end of story...and good night!