How to Install Windows XP

 Many of us think setting up operating system in our domestic PCs is a big deal. A good number are still not aware of fixing silly troubles occur in our machines. Here is where professional troubleshooters make advantage by looting the ignorant group. In my city itself a professional repairman charges 300 to 500 bucks for fixing virus related troubles or Operating system installation. Non technical users have no choice other than depending them. But the interesting part is they do too little work that any high school kid can.  

So here is a tip bag for setting up windows XP in your computer. Reinstalling an operating system can improve system performance - as windows gets slower as it get aged in a system due to logging of files - and remove virus effects caused to previous OS. But a serious inconvenience is loss of data in primary partition and all the accessory soft wares need to be installed again.

So once we decide to reinstall Windows XP there are some points to keep in mind

1. Obviously should have set up CD  of Windows XP (Bootable preferred) with License key
2. Should have set up CDs of Motherboard Drivers (Display, Audio, AGP, PCI, LAN) and other drivers of peripheral devices like printer, modem etc.
3. Setup CDs of all accessory soft wares you need
4. Back up necessary data in primary partition (C drive) including my documents.

Now we are ready to install Windows XP

It’s recommended that we start set up using a bootable disk. For that the disk should be in drive during POST (the starting up stage before logging to windows). Usually systems search for boot records in CD before booting from hard disk and ask you whether to boot from CD. If it doesn’t happen we need to interrupt booting and should enter BIOS setup. To enter BIOS setup there are hotkeys to be pressed during POST which differ with different BIOS (for eg: del for intel, F2 for As rock refer to motherboard manual) Inside change the boot priority and mark it disabled for hard disks and CD Drive as 1^st priority also put no for ‘search other boot  devises’ . This causes your hard disk will not boot. Now when we restart, system will boot from CD and Windows Setup launches.

 After some system analysis and loading of files Setup asks you to select between choices. Choose new installation by pressing the key indicated. Don't select repair old version. And then accept licence agreement

Now u need to select where to install Windows, select the drive where your old windows is installed (C Drive). The setup will warn u that choosing drive containing a OS already isn’t stable, never mind continue to install in the same drive because the next step tell options to format the existing OS. Select ‘Format the selected partition using NTFS file system ’ Confirm to format, 

Set up will format the existing operating system in the C drive. 

In next step set up copies files to a temporary folder and then restarts the system.

Now if the Set was Booted automatically in beginning don’t give yes for booting from CD let system to boot from hard disk because the rest part of set up is from hard disk, For users who have interrupted BIOS and booted the CD have to Enter again to BIOS setup and revert all changes we made earlier and then restart again. 

After the setup launches in GUI based portion it’s pretty easier from here on. While installing, setup pauses a couple of times for you to select options. 

1. Click Customize to change regional settings, if necessary.

2. Type your name and organization. 

3. Type the product key. 

4. Type the computer name and a password for the local Administrator account. 

5. Select the date, time, and time zone settings.

Setup will now install the networking components After a few seconds you will receive the Networking Settings window

6. Select Custom settings and click Next

7. Make sure the 4 options are tick marked

8. Workgroup or Domain

If you're a stand-alone computer, or if you don't know what to enter, or if you don't have the sufficient rights to join a domain - leave the default entry selected and press Next.

Next the setup process will finish copying files and configuring the setup. You do not need to do anything.

After the copying and configuring phase is finished, if XP finds that you have a badly configured screen resolution it will advise you to change it and ask you if you see the new settings right.A Welcome screen is the first thing you see. The computer checks your Internet connectivity and you will be asked to register your copy of XP. Skip those steps

XP will ask you for the default username that will log onto this computer. You can enter as many as 5 users, but you can create more after the installation is finished.

That's it ! u reached your new Desktop of your Fresh XP.

The complete process will complete in less than a hour (don’t mind the time remaining shown in setup window) These steps complete installing windows operating system, but more effort seeking task waits. First thing you have to install now is the Drivers, put the Motherboard CD and install all drivers and then drivers for other hardware components. After installing Drivers your computer is ready to use. But to make it more resourceful the accessory softwares has to be installed

Installing Windows is that simple that you wont even need a ‘paid professional’ to work with and learning to do it our self can avoid being looted.

Hope this article was resourceful,  post queries as comments if any