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Before You Start

Re-installing your Operating System is nothing to be scared of but do not be mistaken, it is quite drastic and how you go about things will have a big effect on the way your system runs.

Before you start re-installing your OS there are two main things that need to be done first: -

Back Up any important data that you need. You should be doing this anyway because hardware can fail at any point and if a hard drive fails your data will be gone if not backed up. In this instance you need to back your data up because if you are going to go to all the trouble of re-installing your OS you may as well do it fully on a cleanly wiped disk. So you will need a copy of your data files when you have finished installing so you can copy them back on to the computer. Don't just think about actual files, also consider things like E-mails, favorites, program settings and product keys to install the programs needed to open these files again.

Device Drivers are the programs which tell the OS how to use the hardware in the machine, for example your sound or network cards. When you have finished installing the OS you will need to load the device drivers so the hardware in your machine will work. You usually get these drivers on a disk when you buy the actual hardware. If you do not have these disks any more you can also normally download the latest drivers for the piece of hardware from the manufacturers web site, however this will not be helpful if you re-install the OS before thinking and then realize that you can not access the internet for your drivers as the network card driver is not installed.

Once you have taken care of backing up your files and making sure you have any device drivers needed you can move on to installing the OS.

Running The Installation Process

The actual process of running the installation program is quite straight forward. The problem comes when the computer asks people to make a decision. Most people do not actually understand what the question is asking so are afraid to make this decision. This next section will show the pages you will come up against when re-installing Windows XP and, hopefully, give an explanation as to what is being asked.

There are two main ways to run the OS installation. The first involves placing the Windows XP CD into the drive when running Windows and using the on screen Windows to start the installation process. Personally I do not like doing it this way as it will copy files to your disk in Windows and you will not be able to wipe everything off, or format, the disk during install. This method of starting the OS install is generally only used if you want to upgrade your current Operating System, say from Windows 2000 to XP, and keep all the settings.

The second, and generally preferred way to start an XP install is to boot from the Windows XP CD. To do this you may need to choose a boot menu or change the boot priority in the BIOS settings but it is the best way to run a XP installation unless you want to upgrade from a previous version. When booting from a CD or DVD you will very briefly see the following screen just after the computer is switched on: -

When you see this displayed on the screen you need to tap a key on your keyboard, for example the space bar. You need to make sure that you tap the key quick enough as you only get a fraction of a second after the message appears before it starts looking for a hard drive to boot from.

Text Mode Setup

If you catch it in time you start running the XP setup process. The first part of this is called the Text Mode Setup and prepares your computer for the installation of the XP files.

The next screen you see which indicates the setup process has started will be a screen like the following which indicates that the setup program is running an initial scan of the hardware.

After setup has finished it's initial system scan you will be presented with a blue screen asking if you wish to install any third party drivers. If your disk drives are on a RAID controller or a new exotic hard drive controller you may need to let the setup program have access to the driver files for these controllers so that it can access the disk drives attached to them.

If you need to install a driver you would need to press the F6 key at this point. You will then be prompted with a message to place a floppy disk into the drive and press return. At this point you will need to place a floppy disk or, if the hardware supports it, a USB pen drive with the driver files on into the computer and hit the return key for the setup program to copy the files. You will know if you need drivers for the controllers if setup can not find any disk drives, assuming the drive is working and properly connected that is.

If you do not need to add any driver files you can ignore this message.

The next message asks you if you want to run an automated system recovery.

If you wish to run an automated system recovery press F2 at this point, if you do not just ignore the message. If you do not know what an automated system recovery is then ignore this message as it would involve using disks which you would have needed to have made previously.

After this the setup program will start loading the files it needs to start off the install process. This is indicated at the bottom of the screen.

Loading the files will take a few minutes but when it has finished loading the files it will advise you that setup is starting the Windows install and repair process.

The next screen that you come across will give you a list of things that you can do from the setup program. You can either install Windows XP by pressing Enter, you can go to the Recovery Console by pressing R or, from this point forward while the screen is still blue, you can exit setup by pressing F3.

The Recovery Console is a basic DOS Prompt where you can run some DOS style commands to diagnose and repair problems with the system. If you are not comfortable in a DOS environment you should probably stay clear unless directed by somebody who knows what they are talking about.

To install XP press the Enter key.

After pressing Enter setup will start to examine your disks to see what it has available for selection.

Next you will be presented with the license agreement which you must agree to if you want to install the software. If you want to read through the agreement you can use the Page Up and Down keys to move through the document.

If you strongly do not agree to the conditions you can disagree to the terms by pressing the Escape key, in this instance setup will exit and the computer restarts without anything being installed.

To move forward from this screen press the F8 key.

The setup program will now load a couple more files then scan your hard drives to see if you have any other Operating Systems on these drives. If you have Windows XP on one of these drives you will see the following screen asking if you want to repair your OS.

If you wish to try to repair the version of XP you already have on your drive press the R key.

From here on in if you have to choose an option from the center of the screen use the up and down arrow keys to move the white line up and down to select the option you want to apply the answer to the question being asked. For example, if you had two disks and they both had a copy of XP already on them the following table would have two entries for Windows XP and you would need to choose the correct one to repair.

To move forward from here and carry on to install a new version of Windows XP press the Escape key.

The next screen you see will be a screen showing you your disk drives that are in the computer and can be read.

If you get to this screen and you can not see a disk you were expecting to make sure you did not need to install a driver for the disk controller when starting setup.

The screen below shows a computer with one 65GB drive. The drive does not have any partitions, it is currently blank. If you want to install the OS on one drive and have the whole drive as one big space just hit return and the format process will start.

If you want to split your drives into different disks you can create partitions by pressing the C key. This will give the next screen where you can choose the size of the disk you want to install XP on.

As you can see below a 40GB disk has been chosen for the OS drive. To create it press Enter.

To cancel creating a drive and go back press the Escape key.

The above example would give a partition layout like the one below. You can see it is a newly created disk as it says new and raw which means that it is not formatted.

If you want to delete any partition you can select the partition and press the D key. This will give you a prompt like the following to check that you are sure you want to delete the partition.

If you delete the partition you will delete all the data on it and change it from being a disk to being unallocated space. If you have lots of drives and you only want one you can delete all the partitions and make a new partition from all of the left over unallocated space.

You need to make sure your OS partition is large enough for the OS and any program files that you are going to install in the future so make sure it is large enough.

You can make new partitions for saving data files from inside Windows when you have installed it so only worry about the system partition while in here.

If you do not really understand what you are doing then perhaps the best method for you is just to use the whole disk as one partition.

Once you have made a partition to the size you want it just press Enter while the partition is selected and you will be shown the format screen which is shown below.

As this disk has just been made we must format it as it does not have a file system on it. To do this just press Enter on Format the Partition Using NTFS.

If you already had a file system on the disk you would see the next screen. Installing XP on a disk with a previous version of an OS on it and leaving the file system intact is usually done to try to get a way to copy files from a system with a completely corrupt set of OS files which will not allow it to boot long enough to be able to back up files. If you do choose this and there is already a copy of Windows on the disk you will be told that this is unwise and ask you to confirm you wish to do this.

This would only be done as a quick fix to get to saved files to back them up before going back and completing a full re-install after.

If you choose to format the drive you will see the next screen. If you choose a quick format it will last around 15 seconds for an average disk, if you go for a normal format the length of time it takes depends on the size of the disk.

Setup will now start to copy all of the new Operating System files onto the hard disk. This can take quite a while depending on the speed of your system but you do get a progress bar like below.

When the files have been copied to the drive the next screen of any significance is the following screen which advises that the computer is about to reboot. A countdown timer gives you 15 seconds to remove any floppy disks or pen drives from the computer but if you do not have one in the computer and are impatient like me you can just hit the return key.

After your computer restarts you will see the message to press any key to boot from CD / DVD again. This time you do not need to press any key as the installation files have now all been copied to your hard drive and will run from this. Do not take the CD out of the drive though as the install will still need to copy more files from it.

GUI Mode Setup

The next screen you will see will start to look a little more familiar and is shown below. This screen indicates that we are moving on to the next part of the install process which is called GUI (Graphical User Interface) Mode Setup.

The GUI Mode Setup process sets the Operating system up according to the hardware that is attached to this particular machine. It is the part of the process that starts asking you for information to cater the OS for the user by asking for regional and personal settings.

GUI Mode Setup starts by showing you the following screen which gives an indicator of the time remaining for the install to complete. This is not always accurate.

Next setup will scan the hardware connected to the system and start to install the hardware specific files that the system will need when it runs. This is shown below.

When Setup has finished setting up the hardware it will start wanting some information from you.

If you have received your OS with your computer it may be an OEM version which may have been altered slightly and the following screens may be missing or in a slightly different sequence.

On a full version of XP the next screen will ask for your regional settings.

I Live in the UK so the settings shown are not correct. To alter them I click on the Customize tab. This opens the Regional and Language Options window.

In this Window make sure the two selectable boxes show your location and then click Apply.

Next click on the Languages tab at the top of the window.

On the Languages tab you will see an Details box, click on this box and the Text Services and Input Languages window will open as follows.

Make sure that your language and country settings are installed in the Installed services window.

If they are not click on the add button and select your language from the list, it will then get added into the Installed Services window. If there is another installed language on the machine click on it and select remove to get rid of it. Now press Apply.

Before going forward make sure that the Default Input Language is your language and then click on OK. This will close the Text Services and Input Languages window.

Finally select the Advanced tab at the top of the window.

Make sure the Language for non-Unicode programs is set to your language and select OK. This will close the Regional and Language Options window.

The Regional and Languages options shown are now correct for where I live so I can click on Next to move forward. This gives me a screen to add my personal details.

After inputting my personal details and clicking on Next I am asked to enter my Product License Key.

If you are installing a copy of Windows which came installed on your computer you may not get asked for a Product Key as some OEM manufacturers can insert some code on an internal ROM. On other occasions you may need to provide the Product Key and in this circumstance the OEM manufacturer will have placed a label on the actual unit itself with the Product Key on it. It will say the name of the OS that it is for and the actual Key itself will be just below this, usually 5 groups of 5 numbers and letters separated by a dash.

If you bought your copy of the OS separately then the Product Key usually comes on a sticky attached the the casing. You can leave it on here or stick it on the computer that you are installing it on so it is always with the unit.

If you have lost the sticky then you may be in trouble and there is absolutely no point running back to the shop or manufacturer saying that you have lost the Product Key sticker and asking for a new one as the simple fact of the matter is that's your fault. If this is the case your only option is to buy a new Product Key which you can do by buying a new copy of XP.

Once you have entered your Product Key and clicked Next you come to the next screen which asks you for a name for your computer. You should choose a different name to any other computers you own but keep it small and memorable as this will make things like sharing files and printers between computers easier.

It will also ask you to enter and confirm and Administrator Password. You should make sure you do not forget this as it is the main Operating System Administrator account password. If you find you have problems in the future you may well be needing this password to try to fix things.

Once you have put in your Computer Name and Administrator Password and selected Next you will be given options to set the time and date.

Make sure that the Time Zone selected is your time zone and that the time and date are correct.

When you click on next this time Setup will have collected the majority of the information that it needs and will carry on installing the OS files on to the hard drive. The following screen will be displayed.

At this point Setup will install any Network Devices and Connections. If you do not have any Network Cards installed in your system or if the XP CD does not have a driver for your particular Network Card you will not see the following two screens.

If you have a network card installed you will see the following screen asking if you want to set the Network Connection up with default settings or if you want to add any custom setting to the Connection, for example adding different Networking Protocols.

If you don't understand any of this it is best to leave it on typical settings as this will install everything needed for general Internet use today.

The next screen asks about a Network Name.

If you are on a business network then your network administrator should have all of the information needed for this.

If you are just setting up a home computer then the likely-hood is that you are not going to be running a Domain Based Network so you can ignore the bottom part. If you don't know if you are running a Domain Based Network then I think it should be quite safe to say that you are not.

This leaves you just a Workgroup name to think of. This Workgroup Name will say WORKGROUP by default but you can change it if you want to. You could change it to something more personal to your family like the family Surname and if you also rename the Workgroup of any other computers in the house to the same name when browsing for files between computers the name of your network will be the family Surname.

Once you have entered your Workgroup Name and selected Next the setup process will continue by configuring the information you have just entered, Installing Start menu items, Registering components, Saving settings and finally Removing any temporary files used.

Once the setup program has finished removing all the temporary files the computer will reboot. You will again see the message to press any key to boot from CD / DVD but you can again ignore it.

The computer will now start to boot into Windows XP for the first time.

With graphics and screens as they are today you will usually find that the first thing you come across is a message saying your screen resolution is going to be automatically adjusted. Click OK to this and it will adjust the screen display, although it may not be as good as you remember it was it this point.

After the screen has adjusted you will see a confirmation dialogue box on the screen asking if you want to accept the changes. If you can see the box then you should accept the changes.

If you can not see the confirmation box then the screen will go back to the way it was at the end of the count-down so you can sort the display out after you have installed the drivers.

The next section can be slightly different depending on the version of Windows XP you are installing and whether you chose to join a Domain network.

I am installing an SP2 version of Microsoft Windows XP so the first screen that I see is a Welcome to Microsoft Windows screen.

To get rid of this click on the Next key and you come to the screen shown below titled Help protect your PC.

This screen asks you if you want to turn Automatic Updates on or leave them off for the time being. If you do not have an Internet connection then there is no point turning them on but if you plan on connecting the computer to the Internet you should turn Automatic Updates on. They help protect your system from known problems that have been picked up.

The next steps described in the following three screen shots may be missed if you are installing an OEM version of XP which does not need Activating.

Windows will now check to see if you currently have a working connection to the Internet. If you do not you can skip this part.

If you do have an Internet connection but it says that you do not you may find that LAN or modem drivers need to be installed first.

If Windows does not initially detect an Internet connection it may ask you how you connect to allow you to set the connection up if it needs certain settings.

If you connect to the Internet through another computer or a router then you would choose the Yes option. If you connect to the Internet through a modem connected directly to the computer you would select No and set up the connection.

Windows will then ask if you want to Activate your copy of XP. If you do not do it now you will have to do it within the next 30 days anyway so you may as well get it over and done with.

Also if you do not Activate your copy of Windows you will not have access to as many patches through Windows or Automatic Update.

If you click next to activate your copy of Windows setup will connect to the internet and try to validate your product key. If it does not you will be asked to either purchase a new key or phone in to Microsoft to get a manual validation.

After the Activation process has finished you will see the following screen. This screen asks you to enter the name of the user that will use the computer.

You must enter at least 1 Username.

After you have entered your Usernames in and selected Next you will get the final setup screen appear in which you only need to click on Finish.

You may see the next screen if you chose to add a password for your account or if you chose to add more than one user to the computer.

If you did not add a password and there is only one user on the computer you will find that it will log on automatically and you will not see the next screen.

To move on from this screen click on the Username you want to log on as, entering the Password if this has been set.

Windows will now start to log on for the first time.

After the logon screen, the Windows desktop will appear and the Operating System will be ready to use.

The process above shows the main steps involved in installing Microsoft Windows XP. Depending on the version of Windows you are installing, i.e. OEM, Home, XP2 etc... some of the screens may be a little different or missing but the majority is still the same.

If you have re-installed your Operating System because you have been having problems then don't move straight on to the next section regarding post installation tasks. While you only have a fresh Operating System on the machine with nothing else take this opportunity to see if the problem you were having before is still present. If you are still experiencing the same problem at this point, i.e. computer crashing, then this would point to a fault in the hardware rather that any OS problem.

If your problem is not present then don't rush ahead but take things one device at a time, then one application at a time so if the problem re-appears then it was the last thing that you installed that is causing the problem.

When You Have Finished Installing The Operating System

Once you have finished installing Windows XP your computer is still not quite ready to go yet, there are another couple of steps which still need to be carried out. These include: -

Install Any Device Drivers Needed For Your Hardware.

The first thing that you need to do after a re-install of XP is to make sure that you install any drivers that are needed for the hardware devices on your system. To check if you need to install any drivers on your computer click on the Start button and then RIGHT click on My Computer, which will open a menu (shown on the right). Choose Manage from the menu and left click it.

This will open the Computer Management window, which is shown below: -

As you can see from the image there is a section called Other devices, next to the question mark icon. This means that these pieces of hardware need a device driver installed for them to work.

This device is showing as Multimedia Audio Controller so we know it's the sound card but sometimes the descriptions can be a little unhelpful in working out which piece of hardware needs a driver installed.

You can install the device drivers in two ways. You can RIGHT click the word Multimedia Audio Controller and select update driver from the list that is shown. You will then be asked if you want the computer to search for the driver automatically or point it to a specific location where you have saved the files. If you point to the location of the files then the OS will try to install the drivers from the files saved in this location.

If you select to locate the drivers automatically the OS will look in various locations on your PC and Microsoft's download center to see if it can find any drivers for the device. Whichever you choose if the OS can not find the driver files the hardware will not be correctly installed.

The other way to install the drivers for the device is to run the setup file on the disks provided with the hardware or by downloading these files from the manufacturers web site and running them.

The best option is to download the latest drivers from the manufacturers web site and use these.

Install Any Microsoft Patches For Your Computer

As time goes on vulnerabilities and bugs in the software will be found so to make sure your computer is up to date you should use Windows Update to download all available patches and hot fix's from Microsoft. This not only means that your computer will be more secure but you may also find that those annoying little problems get magically fixed.

If you have turned Automatic Updates on, which you should, the first few times you connect your computer to the Internet you may find that the connection seems slow and it takes ages to turn the computer off after this. This will be because updates are being downloaded from Microsoft in the background to be installed when the computer is shut down.

Microsoft have released hundreds of patches and updates for XP over the years so you could need to download and install a good 60 to 80 Updates to get your system fully patched up. The argument about faulty products just does not stand because it's pretty much impossible to say that millions of different applications made by different companies are all going to work perfectly on massively diverse systems all being held together by XP.

No matter how many times you need to run it you should run Windows Update again and again until there are no more available updates.

Install Any 3rd Party Programs

When you have finished installing the XP, all the device drivers and patched up your OS you need to get your programs back on to your computer. Don't install stuff that you are never going to use because even though you may not be using it there is no point in having it take up space and alter your system for no reason. Also even though the programs are not being run they may still be using up resources on your computer with library files being loaded into memory and services running in the background just in case you run the program.

You should also make sure that you are installing a decent quality program that is capable of providing all you want from it. If cheap, unknown, unsupported tat screws up your computer you've got nobody to get support from.

When you buy new software install it and then keep the original disks and product keys safe as if you need them in the future, like you need them now, and you have lost the product key or disk then you may end up having to pay for it again.

The first thing you should install is a decent quality Anti virus program and make sure it's kept updated and ran periodically. From here install the rest of the applications that you are going to use.

Replace Any Previously Backed Up Data

At this point the last thing left to do is replace all of your backed up data and put your personal settings back onto your computer. This might include copying music and personal files back into the 'My Documents' folder, setting up E-Mail accounts and importing backed up E-Mails and contacts, replacing your Favorites and setting up peripheral devices like printers and cameras etc...

This is the point where you personalize your computer back to the way that you like it to be and then you should find that you are ready to go.