Asus Eee PC BIOS joys with Windows 7
This post is a (little late) follow up to last week's post where I explained the fun I had with upgrading and then downgrading the BIOS ROM in my ASUS Eee PC 1005HA-H netbook. And this post is a happy one, full of praise for ASUS.
If you have not read the previous post, have a quick read using the link below:
For the days around the Windows 7 launch, I was watching the download page on the ASUSTeK support website for my netbook model. Between the start of October 22nd (Windows 7 Launch Day) in Asia Pacific and the end of the day in the USA, ASUS updated the downloads available to include all the drivers and utilities needed for Windows 7. So by the end of the Windows 7 launch day, everything needed for true Windows 7 compatibility was available. Well done and thank you.
Now that the Windows 7 drivers and utilities were available, on the 23rd I decided to try again. This time the drivers should support the latest 0905 BIOS version.
If you upgrade your BIOS first, you will get the same error as last time until you have un-installed the old drivers and installed the new ones:
Missing ASUS ACPI Driver, Please install ASUS ACPI Driver
I did it the other way around, I un-installed the old drivers and installed the new ones. This causes the following error from the Hotkey driver (new ACPI driver), but I was expecting some sort of message:
ASUS ACPI Service: Can't get WMI ASUS Management Object
I then use the AFUDOS tool to upgrade the ROM BIOS to the 0905 build and rebooted and the error no longer appeared. I then finished installing the rest of the drivers and everything works perfectly. Once the drivers and the BIOS match there is no issue.
Interestingly enough, Windows 7 decided that the machine had changed enough that it asked me to re-activate windows. A short automated phone call and all was resolved.
Thanks to the updated BIOS, the Super Hybrid Engine 2.0 driver and better support for Windows 7 power saving functions I now get somewhere between 10 and 13 hours battery life.
Also, as a bonus, the Windows Experience Index has increased from a rating of 2.0 to 2.2. Due to the better graphics performance of the new drivers.
David
23-Nov-2009: Since this article was posted, there have been a number of driver and utility updates as well as a new BIOS version (1102) released.