Elonex Webbook clean install
 

I have been holding off for a month from posting this, preferring to try out every possible solution but hey, the Elonex is literrally doing my head in:

A family member asked if I could fix his elonex webbook after the screen got smashed (we shall call this webbook X). He was in possession of second one that had errors on the HDD (Webbook Y).

So my plan was simple, swap HDD on X into Y, reinstall windows. Simple.

Except, HDD X was busted as well. So I bought a Tosh mk1252gsx, the cheapest 2.5" I could find on ebuyer.
I then tried to install xp on it through an sd but it wouldn't pickup the HDD during the install, which I believe is due to it being a SATA.

I downloaded all the drivers from the elonex site, slip-streamed it, went through the process of putting it on an SD again but no luck.

Managed to get the ghost image from HDD Y and mounted it but no luck. Tried various combinations without much luck, including linux.

So now I got a deal on a portable DVD drive, burnt W7 on dvd and tried but, my luck I burnt x64. Didn't work. Used my last dvd to burn x86, went as far as the 'select partition' page but no further. I did read somewhere that W7 played along with SATA unlike XP that was released before SATA became so common but that didn't seem to work.

I have now spent a damn lot of hours trying to fix it, spent some money on a new HDD, without much success.
I feel I have tried everything and simply want to give it back but I just hate the feeling that I willingly took on a task but cannot complete it.

Can anyone suggest anything please?

Thank you all for reading through this lengthy post!

Re: Elonex Webbook clean install
 

Possibly try installing from a USB. XP guide http://en.kioskea.net/faq/3065-insta...from-a-usb-key

Vista/7 guide http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-in...working-guide/

Hopefully someone else might be able to offer some other advice.

Good luck...

Re: Elonex Webbook clean install
 

Can you connect the one with the broken screen to an external monitor? If you can could you try the install on that one? Could be a faulty SATA controller on Netbook X? If that works you could simply swap the screen from Netbook X and put it on Netbook Y instead of swapping the drives.
Also worth looking in the BIOS for SATA controller modes. If you can change it from AHCI to IDE or legacy it should solve your problem. Not ideal since it will be a tiny bit slower but that's the only real downside.

Re: Elonex Webbook clean install
 

Somehow I was unable to boot from USB. It gave the option of sd/mmc. My SD card was actually a micro sd in an sd adaptor, I used an SD card reader and applied the USB method to have xp on there. I also tried the w7 usb method.

---------- Post added at 21:15 ---------- Previous post was at 21:12 ----------

Havn't tried the external monitor. Will do that asap.
I did look around for SATA options but can't remember seeing much. Will have a look and will update you.

The webbook has a VIA chip, could that make it a bit more difficult?

Re: Elonex Webbook clean install
 

The connector will be loose, trust me, mine had water damaged keyboard and ended up getting a 'sold as faulty/spares or repairs' one from ebay, its problem was that it wouldnt recognise the hard drive so I stripped it and disconnected all cables inside, reconnected and works fine with the same hdd, it could be a problem with the cable itself or the connection, its not a difficult job but u do need to be tech savvy, just reseat cables and try it again.

Re: Elonex Webbook clean install
 

Go into the bios of the netbook and change the SATA mode from AHCI to Compatible. then try again with XP