I did'nt try that one out but will do as soon as I have spare USB harddisk drive.
With the accompanying CD of the eeePC I was able to format a USB stick, install the software onto it and finally do a fresh install from the stick instead an optical drive. Fresh install with booting from the eeePC-CD worked anyway very well and as described.
Imortant to mention is that the USB stick does NOT appear in the BIOS boot order list. You have to look for it in the harddisk section and give it there a higher priority to get the eeePC to boot from it.
For the fresh install the USB is switched to USB1.1 mode, very likely due to compatibility reasons, which renders the built-in webcam to not be recognized. You have to switch it back by hand in the BIOS by changing the 'Operating System installation flag' from 'Install' to 'Finished'. The words I've used may be not exact and are very likely different in (your) eeePC's BIOS, but I don't feel like rebooting at the moment.