Help Installing XP

[Sayonara]

You should hear the screams.

[yummifruitbat]

OK, you say you've formatted the hard drive - how exactly? Do you have an XP install CD or an upgrade?

 

It sounds like you had Word/Excel etc. preinstalled on the computer when you got it: do you have an install CD for those?

 

I format my hard drive every year or so to clear up all the junk that Windows likes to accumulate. XP isn't as bad for that as 98, which was pretty appalling. The way I do it is as follows:

 

- Make sure you have all the discs you will need to replace any software/files you wish to reinstall on your 'new' computer. You can't "back up" programs like Word if they're already installed, you need the installation disc. You will almost certainly also need drivers for your computer's hardware components: these should have been supplied with it. If not, don't worry too much: XP has a good set of its own basic drivers so it's unlikely you will not be able to get your computer at least 70% functional without any of the original manufacturers' software.

 

- Restart your computer and go into the BIOS. This is usually done by pressing Del or F2 right at startup, but the key you need depends on your motherboard. The BIOS is the grassroots setup utility which tells your computer how to start up, what to do with the drives/cards, and things like the time and date. Once you're in the BIOS (usually a blue menu screen) you'll find somewhere an option for Boot Sequence or the equivalent. You need to set this to boot from your CD drive first (by default it'll probably try floppy or primary hard disk first). I'm assuming you have a bootable CD drive, otherwise you'll need to create XP Setup startup floppies, which I've never done.

 

- Once you've done that, restart your computer again with the XP install CD in the drive. If you've successfully set up the BIOS to boot from CD, you should see a blue XP Setup screen. Follow the instructions for a Clean Install.

 

- The XP setup utility can automatically format your hard drive. You will probably need to delete the existing partition and then create a new one. Make it NTFS, this is much more efficient and stable than FAT under XP... in fact I can't remember if XP even gives you the option of using FAT for a clean installation.

 

- I think the rest of the installation process is pretty straightforward. I've done it so many times myself that it's become automatic and I can't remember exactly which steps I take now. Follow the instructions it gives you and post here if you get stuck!

 

Edit: Yay! I'm not a Lepton any more!