Playing with the HP Stream mini

[Shivansps]

BTW, I did use Rufus and a Windows 7 Professional SP1 ISO to create a [legacy] bootable scenario, but because W7 lacks USB3 support and the Stream mini seems to lack backwards USB1/1.1/2 support in the BIOS I could not move past the initial install screen.

I now wonder what would happen if I were to clone my i7 PC's W7pro SSD and just connect it up to the SATA-to-USB3 cable. I know with XP I could delete all of the hardware devices in the device manager and move the HDD to another computer and let it discover all of the hardware of the new system.

I think because W7 has an active discovery process that it will discover any deleted device immediately following deletion. Still, I suppose I could test this scenario.

it may work and it may no, you can move a windows 8 install to another pc no problems, but win7 has problem.

What you could do, if drivers are the problem is to integrate them intro both the boot and install .wim images of your windows 7, i gona post you the how to do it once im back home.

 

[Shivansps]

OK, first you need to install Windows ADK

1) Copy boot.wim and install.wim from your Windows 7 dvd or iso intro something easy to access, like root of C drive.

1b) Create a empty folder in the same place

1c) Extract your drivers intro a folder, make a folder called drivers and put inside the drivers you want to integrate, they need to be extracted, no .zip or .exes.

2) Open Windows ADK CMD

3) Mount the image

Dism /mount-wim /wimfile:C: \boot.wim /index:1 /mountdir:C: \emptyfolder

4) Integrate the drivers

Dism /image:c: \emptyfolder /Add-Driver /driver:C: \drivers /recurse

5) Save image

Dism /Unmount-Wim /MountDir:C: \emptyfolder /Commit

repeat for your install.wim

After that reemplace the boot and install .wim on your install media for these.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

There is a problem with this approach ... assuming that there are Windows 7 drivers for the HP hardware. I just checked and there are no HP driver support for the HP Stream mini. Only support HP provides, in the way of drivers, is for Windows 8 and 8.1, respectively.

BTW, I did re-clone the W7pro i7 PC environment and re-attached it to the Stream mini. I figured the installed USB3 drivers in the i7 environment included Intel core USB3 support. Unfortunately I get only to the initial splash screen and then it freezes and immediately reboots. I think this is due to some other reason than USB3.

 

[nikotime]

Hey Barking, I was wondering in your experience of installing Kodi whether the HD Audio options are available/work? I.e. DTS-HD, etc.

 

[Dahak]

There is a problem with this approach ... assuming that there are Windows 7 drivers for the HP hardware. I just checked and there are no HP driver support for the HP Stream mini. Only support HP provides, in the way of drivers, is for Windows 8 and 8.1, respectively.

BTW, I did re-clone the W7pro i7 PC environment and re-attached it to the Stream mini. I figured the installed USB3 drivers in the i7 environment included Intel core USB3 support. Unfortunately I get only to the initial splash screen and then it freezes and immediately reboots. I think this is due to some other reason than USB3.

What you could try is after you clone it, before plugging it in to the stream boot cloned drive on the computer that you cloned it from and then run

Sysprep /generalize /shutdown /oobe

This will make the install hardware independent and will boot up with the mini setup.

 

[Shivansps]

There is a problem with this approach ... assuming that there are Windows 7 drivers for the HP hardware. I just checked and there are no HP driver support for the HP Stream mini. Only support HP provides, in the way of drivers, is for Windows 8 and 8.1, respectively.

BTW, I did re-clone the W7pro i7 PC environment and re-attached it to the Stream mini. I figured the installed USB3 drivers in the i7 environment included Intel core USB3 support. Unfortunately I get only to the initial splash screen and then it freezes and immediately reboots. I think this is due to some other reason than USB3.

try with the win8 ones.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Shivansps, I really don't want to try that hard. I can live with Win8.1 for what the product is.

Dahak, I might give this a try as a final effort.

Nikotime, the device manager is unclear as to what hardware is being used. My best guess is it is using the Intel HD audio. Strange, though, is that two drivers appear, one Intel and one Realtek. Also, the only tray icon is for a 'DTA+ control panel' which doesn't provide any further enlightenment.

I would have to create a source with DTS-HD and try playing this out of the mini into something like the Denon AVR and see if DTS-HD is being processed.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

What you could try is after you clone it, before plugging it in to the stream boot cloned drive on the computer that you cloned it from and then run

Sysprep /generalize /shutdown /oobe

This will make the install hardware independent and will boot up with the mini setup.

I tried the sysprep method and let the system reboot on its native hardware to get an experience so I knew what to expect.

I then re-ran sysprep and swapped it onto the HP Stream Mini, but I got the exact same results. I get only to the initial Windows Is Starting screen with the twinkling colored lights begin, freeze and reboot. Repeat ...

I think there is something much more fundamental going on.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Windows 7 doesn't support M.2 storage, as far as I know.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Windows 7 doesn't support M.2 storage, as far as I know.

While this is good to know, this playing around wasn't using m.2 storage. I've been trying to boot Windows 7 from a SATA-to-USB3.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I think this Stream mini with the external SSD connected via cable is susceptible to indirect static electricity.

The chilly weather has had the forced hot air going and the indoor humidity levels are as you can imagine quite low. This means good zaps of static electricity. Not directly to the Stream mini, but rather as I discharge on the table frame the Stream mini is on.

Hell, I can deliberately avoid discharging on the table frame (metal folding legs frame with particle board top) and instead discharge on the faceplate screw of the room ceiling light and get the same results!

Mind you I do not have this plugged into a UPS, but I do have it plugged into a surge suppressor. In fact, it is plugged into the same surge suppressor as my main PC and assortment of other things (monitor, external hard drive, wireless router, etc.) that do not seem to have such a fragile nature.

Any thoughts on this indirect static discharge to power off condition?

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I posted this thread about my observations of web browser performance for 1080P video stream from YouTube. I was and still am bewildered by why the Chrome browser performed so poorly compared to Firefox and Internet Explorer on YouTube.

One would think that Chrome would perform the best considering its relationship to YouTube (ahem, Google), but the following shows not just the frame drops, but also compliments the extremely high CPU usage on the Task Manager Performance tab that is not seen with FF and IE.

The 'Disable hardware-accelerated video decode' option was toggled, which improved the playback, but didn't resolve the stuttering in playback. All browsers had add-on plugins disabled with system restart. I even deleted all plugins from Chrome.

 

[HPMiniTampa]

I puchased a 256GB Transcend SSD. I created 'Recovery Media' through 'HP Recovery Manager' to a 64 GB USB drive. I copied the system image to a 1 TB external drive. I replaced the SSD and rebooted the system. At first all I had in was my external drive and I got a message about recovery media not found so I put my thumb drive in. I went to 'Advanced Options' and restored from system image. All went well until I looked at the size of my SSD - it shows 32 GB. I looked out on Device Manager and the new drive shows. But under "c:" it shows 32 GB. What did I do wrong ?

 

[midwestfisherman]

Did you format the new drive before the OS install?

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Not sure if this plays into the HP Stream mini or not. I used a Samsung EVO 840 SSD to clone the OEM SSD, and then in turn booted off of it. I did this so when the Transcend SSD arrived I could clone onto it what was on the Samsung.

The Samsung clone works fine in terms that it boots, but this morning I was about to clean and re-purpose it when I decided to pop it into my i7 PC and boot. That went fine except for something truly odd. I opened My Computer and the consumption bar for the C: was red, reporting !500MB left free.

Ouch! I ran disk cleanup on it but this only managed to get 900MB free on the 22GB partition. Right-clicking the C: reports 20.0GB consumed, but 15.3GB on disk. The winsxs folder 9.4GB but 6.7GB on disk.

My point of this posting isn't to chastise M$ for such lousy management of its filesystem and operating system, but to wonder aloud at how HP could think the Stream mini could be useful to anyone under the end results.

BTW, the only thing I installed was Classic Shell, FF, Chrome and Macrium Reflect. Exactly how much longer could a Win8.1 continue to run on a paltry 32GB SSD. And please keep in mind I uninstalled much of the blot software that HP through on the SSD to begin with.

I think I need to research on how to enlarge the C: partition using the unused portion of the 120GB Samsung SSD. Otherwise the Stream is headed to uselessness.

 

[Kaido]

Gizmodo posted a review:

http://gizmodo.com/hp-stream-mini-review-a-deceptively-capable-tiny-deskt-1692158242

They said the usability went up a truckload by adding more RAM.

 

[H0lyD1ver]

I've just installed WIN 7 PRO x64 on the HP Mini Stream 200-010, but the Win 8.1 drivers for the ethernet and wifi will not work. Everything else seems to be working properly (graphics, bluetooth, etc). I tried the drivers found here:
http://support.hp.com/us-en/product...sktop-PC-series/7538679/model/7541620/drivers

Anyone have ideas/possible solutions?

 

[H0lyD1ver]

Figured it out - download the driver direct from Realtek:
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads...d=5&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

then select:
Win7 and Server 2008 R2 Auto Installation Program (SID:1711892)

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Exactly how were you able to install Windows 7 on the HP Stream Mini? Please describe in detail how you accomplished this. BTW, I've swapped out the OEM SSD and RAM and now have a 120GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. About to perform a clean install of Windows 8, though.

 

[Kaido]

Exactly how were you able to install Windows 7 on the HP Stream Mini? Please describe in detail how you accomplished this. BTW, I've swapped out the OEM SSD and RAM and now have a 120GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. About to perform a clean install of Windows 8, though.

According to this guy, you just hit Escape at boot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro4VWSBPJ00

If you don't have a USB DVD drive, you can burn an ISO of Win7 to a USB stick using Microsoft's official USB installer tool:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/windows-usb-dvd-download-tool

I finally got one on order from Amazon when the price bounced back to $179, looking forward to playing with it :thumbsup:

 

[Viper GTS]

I've been looking for evidence of someone putting ESXi on one of these. I'd like to offload some infrastructure type stuff off of my big ESXi host (vcenter, openvpn, radius, etc) and one of these with 16 GB could be perfect for that.

I'm concerned by the Realtek NIC though I think that is going to end up being the limiting factor.

Viper GTS

 

[Kaido]

I've been looking for evidence of someone putting ESXi on one of these. I'd like to offload some infrastructure type stuff off of my big ESXi host (vcenter, openvpn, radius, etc) and one of these with 16 GB could be perfect for that.

I'm concerned by the Realtek NIC though I think that is going to end up being the limiting factor.

Viper GTS

I'll give it a shot when mine comes in next week, any particular version?

 

[Viper GTS]

I'll give it a shot when mine comes in next week, any particular version?

6.0 ideally.

Viper GTS

 

[Kaido]

6.0 ideally.

Viper GTS

I see v6 just made GA a few weeks ago, nice! Fill me in on the latest, I think the last time I used it was 4.1 or something - ESX merged with ESXi, right? And now vSphere = ESXI + vCenter Server?

Looks like the Ethernet driver may indeed be the hangup. H0lyD1ver posted a link to the driver downloads:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37276756&postcount=42

I don't know exactly what chip the Realtek is:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...8&productOid=7541620&sw_lang=&product=7541619

I'll run a Belarc on mine when it comes in. More info here:

http://www.v-front.de/2015/03/vsphere-6-is-ga-ultimate-guide-to.html#more

When VMware released ESXi 5.5 in 2013 they decided to drop some drivers for NICs from it that are commonly used in consumer grade hardware: r8168 and r8169 for Realtek chips, sky2 for Marvell chips (and less common: s2io for Neterion 10Gb cards). Luckily you could still keep them installed when upgrading from ESXi 5.1 to 5.5 or install them later on top of ESXi 5.5.

With ESXi 6.0 VMware goes a step further and actively prevents installing these drivers by using a blacklisting method that is based on VIB package dependencies! The ESXi system package misc-drivers is flagged to replace the above mentioned driver packages which means that you cannot install misc-drivers and any of these drivers - misc-drivers though is absolutely necessary for ESXi so you must install that!

As a workaround I created a new package that just includes the driver files of the net-r8168, net-r8169, net-sky2 and net-s2io packages, but uses a new and different name: net51-drivers.

...

Another note: In my V-Front Online Depot there is also an updated driver for Realtek 8168 based NICs available that provides better compatibility with newer Realtek cards than the ESXi 5.1 builtin r8168 driver. If you have already installed this one then the workaround explained here is not necessary, because it uses a different package name (net55-r8168) that is not on the blacklist.

Haven't tinkered with anything other than the enduser virtualization software in awhile so this should be fun. I have a bunch of BRIX lying around that I should try it on too, hmm. Super extensive page on it here:

http://www.virten.net/2015/02/vmware-homeserver-esxi-on-gigabytes-brix/

I wonder if they'll ever sell external vGPU devices, that would be pretty cool...

 

[Viper GTS]

ESX no longer exists, it's just ESXi now. vSphere is the whole family of products from the hypervisor on up. They have too many products to keep track of now but for most people it will be vcenter and ESXi.

I suspect the realtek is going to kill the whole thing, the brix are certainly nice but the price goes up so much that I'd go another direction. $180 plus some memory would make it an easy choice.

Viper GTS