Installing Windows XP can take up to one hour. To make the process more manageable, it has been broken up into several sections. When you are ready, install Windows XP.

•    Floppy Drive
•    Unpartitioned and Unformatted Hard Drive
•    CD ROM Drive
•    Keyboard
•    Mouse
•    Network Interface Card
•    SVGA Monitor
•    Windows xp cd

1.Insert the Windows XP CD into your computer (DVD/CD-ROM) and restart your computer.

2. If prompted to start from the CD, press SPACEBAR. If you miss the prompt (it only appears for a few  seconds), restart your computer to try again.Windows XP Setup begins. During this portion of setup, your mouse will not work, so you must use the keyboard. On the Welcome to Setup page, press ENTER.

3. Almost immediately after Windows setup begins the screen shown to the left will appear. Unless you have the very latest in hardware you probably won't need to press the F6 key to install and SCSI or RAID driver. However, when XP is first installed it tries to determine what type of BIOS is available on the computer. Newer systems have what is known as Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) capability. Unfortunately, XP doesn't always recognize a computer BIOS is ACPI capable and doesn't install the support for ACPI. Pressing F5 at this point allows you to select the proper HAL. A full description of the process is here.

4. Once the initialization process completes, the screen in Figure 03 loads to guide the XP installation process. More than anything, this screen is a fork in the installation road. This guide deals with a clean install and to accomplish that goal select the first option by pressing Enter. If you wanted to use the Recovery Console with an already completed XP installation, pressing R would be the proper choice. F3 ends the current installation process. After pressing Enter, setup will search the drives for an existing XP installation.

5. Pretty much any way you go at an installation anymore you're going to run into the Windows XP Licensing Agreement, better known as the End-User License Agreement or EULA, shown in Figure 04. Press F8 if you agree to the terms or press Esc and start researching alternative operating systems if you don't agree. There's no middle of the road.

6. Since you agreed to the terms of the EULA in the previous step, and because this is a clean installation from an upgrade version of XP to an unpartitioned and unformatted hard disk, the screen in Figure 05 appears asking you to verify you qualify to use the upgrade product. Of all the XP installs I've done I could count on two hands the number of times they have been done from full version CD's rather than upgrade CD's, so it's pretty likely you'll see this screen. The qualifying products are listed on the screen. Replace the XP CD with the qualifying product CD and press Enter.

7. Once Microsoft is convinced you've agreed to the EULA and qualify to install the upgrade version, the screen in Figure 06 appears where you choose a drive and partition on which to install XP. For those familiar with prior Windows operating systems, this section of setup is equivalent to FDISK when a clean install is being performed. In this example, since there is only the one hard disk it will be used to create the install partition by pressing C.

8. Once the partition creation has been initiated, the screen in Figure 07 opens and prompts for the size of the partition that will be created. As long as you adhere to the minimum and maximum listed on the screen you have the freedom to set partition sizes as you wish. Keep in mind that there are minimum space requirements to install XP. Set the size of the desired partition and press Enter.

9. Once the partition has been created you are returned to the screen in Figure 08. If there is still unallocated space on the drive and you want to create another partition, highlight the unallocated space entry and press C again to repeat the partition creation process. If you want to change the partition that was just created, highlight it using the up and down arrow keys and press D. A confirmation message will be displayed. Once you're satisfied with the partition scheme, highlight the desired install partition and press Enter.

10. The final step after creating and selecting the install partition is specifying the file system to use for formatting the partition. The available choices will be shown on the screen that appears as in Figure 09. In most cases you'll want to use NTFS. It's far more secure than FAT32 and supports permissions, encryption, and compression. The only reason for considering FAT32 would be data sharing with W9x/Me installations and since this scenario deals with a clean install it's not even a consideration. 

11. Remember a few steps ago when XP wanted you to insert a CD to prove you qualified to use the upgrade version of XP? What it didn't do was tell you to remove the qualifying version and reinsert the XP installation CD. That time has arrived. Why it doesn't do this immediately after the verification I have no idea, nor will I waste more time on this screen.

12. The XP CD is back in the drive and the partition is being formatted. This part of the process is totally non-interactive and a tad less interesting than watching paint dry - unless of course the paint is the same hideous yellow color as the progress bar.

13. You thought the part where the partition was formatted was boring? More of the same in this section of setup where the files needed for installation are being copied to the hard drive. You'd think at the least they could have changed the progress bar color.

 

14. Almost there; the configuration is being initialized. This screen has a blissfully short appearance.

15. Finally. A red progress bar that indicates the system will reboot in 15 seconds so the Graphical User Interface portion of setup can begin. If you're still awake, tap the Enter key to speed up that 15 seconds until restart. This is the end of the text portion of setup.

16. This is it - Prepare yourself for what is possibly the longest commercial for a piece of software that has ever been presented, also called the Graphical User Interface phase of XP setup. Click the Onward to Phase II link below.