Date: July 20, 2002
From: Fuddster Installing Windows XP 101
This 101 will help you install a clean install of Windows XP Home -or- Pro Upgrade Version
to a freshly partitioned and formatted hard drive. For other install scenarios, stop by
the CompuClues Forums and ask away!
Preparation
Make sure you qualify for the Windows XP Upgrade Version. The qualifying Operating Systems
to upgrade from are:
For XP Home:
Windows 98
Windows 98 Second Edition (SE)
Windows Millennium Edition (ME)
For XP Pro:
Same as for XP Home, PLUS
Windows NT Workstation 4.0
Windows 2000 Professional
Windows XP Home Edition
Official Minimum Windows XP Requirements
233 megahertz (MHz) Pentium or higher microprocessor (or equivalent)
128 megabytes (MB) recommended (64 MB of RAM minimum)
1.5 GB of free space on your hard disk
VGA monitor
Keyboard
Mouse or compatible pointing device
CD-ROM or DVD drive
You said you want practical requirements? Use the MIB Rule: More Is Better
Fuddster's recommended minimum requirements:
500 MHz CPU
256 MB Ram
10 GB Hard Drive or Partition
Super VGA (800 x 600) video
CD-ROM or DVD drive
Network card (For home networking or Cable/DSL Internet)
Step 1. Analyze your current system
You must make sure that your current hardware and software is compatible with Windows XP.
The easiest way to start would be by using the Microsoft Windows XP Upgrade Advisor. It is
included on the Windows XP CD-ROM or you can download it from Microsoft here (WARNING: It is a huge - 50 MB - file!). Another
option is to check the Windows Hardware Compatibility List here. This
site will let you see if that new (or old) component you have is compatible with XP.
If your hardware passes the Upgrade Advisor check, chances are you will have no issues
with installation. If you do have a piece of hardware that is flagged, all hope is not
lost. Your first option is to check the website of your hardware's manufacturer to see if
there are Windows XP drivers available for download. The other, more expensive, option
would be to upgrade your hardware to something that is XP friendly.
Whether your hardware passes the test or not, it is always a good idea to download current
drivers for all of your hardware before you take on an OS upgrade. [Ed. note: ...and make
sure you copy them to removable media that your computer can read during an install.]
The Upgrade Advisor will also give a report on the software it finds on your system, and
whether or not is is compatible with XP. Again, it never hurts to have the most recent
versions of MOST software on your system. Check here for a web site devoted to software compatibility with
Windows XP.
(Babster's Note: Another XP/NT/2K compatibility site is NT Compatible.)
Step 2. Back up your current data
You will need to back up all of the data that you don't want to lose before we begin the
Windows XP installation.
Do not use the built-in Win98/98SE/ME backup utility to do this, as you won't be able to
recover those files with the XP backup utility.
I tend to backup my files by hand because, well, it's MY data and I'll know where it is
and how it got there. On the other hand, the File And Settings Transfer Wizard is
supposed to do a good job of transferring your data and your program settings to your new
installation. You can run it from the Windows XP CD on your current system by inserting
the CD in your drive and when it autoruns, choose Perform Additional Tasks from the menu,
then choose Transfer Files And Settings from the next menu. The rest of the wizard will
guide you through copying your data to a safe place for later restoration to your new
Windows XP setup.
Step 3. Choices
Now it is time for a few important choices. Actually, this 101 has made one choice for
you, as we are going to perform a clean install on a freshly partitioned and formatted
disk using your Windows XP Upgrade disk.
It is very important to read everything here all the way through before performing any
of the steps described. Performing these steps will erase everything on your hard drive!
There are two ways to prepare your hard drive for our install. The first is to use the
FDISK utility from a boot disk to partition your drive, or you can partition it as part of
the install routine on the XP CD.
If you are going to use the FDISK utility to prep your hard
drive, I strongly suggest reading the Nuke
& Pave 101 for detailed instructions. For this Installing Windows XP 101, we will
be prepping the hard drive as part of the installation.
The next choice to make is what file system you want to use. The choices are FAT32 and
NTFS, and for some people it is almost a religious decision. The bottom line is that NTFS
is, overall, a better file system, although many people balk at it because DOS/Win9x
Operating Systems cannot read or write to an NTFS drive without third party software.
Microsoft has some good articles about the subject here and here.
I've been using NTFS on my system since I installed Windows 2000 on my system when it came
out, and have never had any problems with it, so that will be what we go with during this
101.
Step 4. Installing XP, Stage One - Starting the Install
There are two easy ways to begin a clean installation on a Nuked or About-To-Be-Nuked hard
drive. The easiest is if your hardware supports booting from the CD-ROM drive. Just pop
the XP Upgrade disk into your CD-ROM drive and reboot the computer. Presto! You have now
begun the install by booting from the CD-ROM.
The second way involves downloading a set of Setup Disks from Microsoft for beginning the
install from your floppy drive. You'll need a set of 6 blank floppy disks to create the
setup disks.
Get the disks for Windows XP Home Edition here.
Get the disks for Windows XP Pro Edition here.
Follow the instructions for creating the floppy disks, then boot with the first disk and
follow the prompts.
Step 5. Installing XP, Stage Two - The DOS Portion
OK, so you're ready, and you've begun the installation. When you boot and begin the
installation, Windows Setup will check your computer's hardware configuration.
When that check is complete, you will have a chance to press F6 if you need to load
SCSI or RAID or other hardware drivers.
Once past that point, XP will start to load the files it needs to run.
Soon you'll find yourself at the Welcome to Setup screen. At this juncture you will
have the option to setup Windows now, repair a previous installation, or quit with
installing Windows.
Press ENTER to setup Windows now.
You are then presented with the EULA, or as I like to call it, The Letter From Satan. You
can't install Windows if you don't agree to the License Agreement, so
Press the F8 key now.
At this point, if there is no Windows OS on your hard drive, XP Setup will want to verify
that you qualify for an upgrade.
Insert your previous OS CD into the drive and press Enter.
When XP is satisfied that you qualify, you'll come to the partitioning screen.
If you have any partitions on your hard drive, they will appear here. Before we move on,
we want to make sure we have a new, blank, unformatted partition to install XP on. I'm
going to assume that there is one existing partition on this hard drive that held a
Windows 98 SE installation.
The first thing I will do is delete the existing partition. I highlight the existing
partition using the up/down arrow keys, then press D to delete the partition. Setup
will tell me that the partition I want to delete is a system partition and ask to confirm
my choice by pressing ENTER. I do, and am given one last chance to confirm my
choice by pressing L.
I will then be shown the same screen as before, except that now it shows the hard drive as
nothing but unpartitioned space. Now we need to set up a new partition for Windows XP. For
now, we will be making one partition that fills the hard drive.
So now, we press C to create a new partition. Setup then asks how big we want the
partition to be. Press ENTER to accept the default, which is the maximum amount of
available space on the drive.
Now we highlight the new partition with the up/down arrow keys and press ENTER to
install Windows there.
Now Setup wants to know how we want to format the drive. Use the up/down arrow keys to
highlight
Format the partition using the NTFS file system
and press ENTER.
If you didn't remove your previous OS disk earlier, Setup will prompt you to do it now,
and you hard drive will begin the formatting process.
.....waiting for format to finish.....
Once you're done formatting, XP will do a short examination of your disk, then start the
process of copying files.
.....waiting for copying to finish.....
Once file copying is finished, the computer will reboot and the GUI portion of setup will
begin...
Step 6. Installing XP - Stage Three - The GUI Portion
Once you computer has restarted after XP has copied all the necessary files, it will churn
away for a few minutes until the Regional and Language Options dialog shows up. You can
examine your settings and change the if needed. When you are ready, click Next.
Next, you can enter your Name and Organization. Once you're finished that, click Next.
Then you are prompted to type in your Product Key. Again, click Next when ready.
Now for some fun. You get to name your computer! Type it in, then click Next.
Set your Date, Time and Time Zone, then click Next.
After a minute or two a dialog may come up for your Network Settings. Your best bet for
now is to accept the typical settings and reconfigure later if needed. Don't forget to
click Next! 
Time to wait some more while Setup does its thing...
Once Setup is done doing its thing, your PC will reboot again, leading to
Step 7. Installing XP - Stage Four - Setting Up Your PC & Finishing Up
Once your PC is finished rebooting, the Welcome To Microsoft Windows screen starts and it
wants to help you set up your computer. Once it loads, click Next.
XP will then check for Internet Connectivity. You'll have a chance to tell it whether you
connect through a LAN or directly, or you can skip this part and configure it later. Click
either Skip or Next.
The next screen asks if you want to activate Windows now. Activation is the new method
that Microsoft has developed to thwart the casual copies of Windows. Like it or not, you
can read more about it. Here is Microsoft's overview of Product Activation, and here is a more
technical explanation of what activation does and which hardware it looks at on your
machine.
As far as this screen goes, however, I would recommend holding off on activation until
your machine is up and working properly with all the correct drivers installed and with no
other issues that may cause you to swap out hardware. This way you won't need to worry
about being locked out of your system while getting it set up correctly. Just remember
(not that XP will let you forget) that you only have 30 days to activate. So choose No
to activation, then click Next.
Who will be using your computer? I really don't care, but Windows does. On this screen,
type in the names/nicknames of everyone who will be regularly using the machine. These
names will go on the Welcome Screen, the main logon screen when XP boots up. If you are
going to be the only user of the machine type your name in the top slot. When you're done,
click Next.
You're almost done! Click Finish to move on.
If you configured more than one user in the previous screen, you are presented with the
Welcome screen. Click on your name, and you will be placed on the Windows XP desktop. If
you are configured as the only user, you will go straight to the Windows XP desktop.
There! You've just installed Windows XP. I based this installation 101 on a Windows XP
Home Edition Upgrade that I performed while I was writing this article. Keep in mind that
some portions of a Windows XP installation may differ due to different hardware on your
system or if you are installing XP Pro on your machine.
Also keep in mind, especially if you've only ever used Windows 95, 98, or ME, that XP is
an entirely different animal than what you're used to, so there's a little bit more of a
learning curve involved. A place I recommend (Other than the CompuClues Forum, of course)
to learn more about XP is the Windows XP Expert Zone. Sure, it's overloaded with Microsoft hype, but
there's some good tidbits in there.
Oh, in case anyone's interested, the system I installed XP Home on while I was writing
this was a Pentium 233 MHz machine with 64 MB of RAM and a 2 GB hard drive. It wasn't
pretty, but it was what I had available.
By the way, after installing XP Home on the machine mentioned above, my system shows
1.05 GB of disk space used on an 2 GB drive formatted with NTFS. Task Manager shows about
18 MB of memory available, out of 64 MB installed. |
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