worldclassifiednet: INSTALLING WINDOWS

Clean Install Windows XP

Does your system allow booting from the CD? Check your BIOS by noting during boot up the Key Commands needed to access the BIOS, this will be a text message usually at the bottom of the screen. If your system has a splash screen with the OEM logo hiding the boot up screen, press ESC as soon as you start boot up. When you get to the BIOS, access the screen that allows you to change the boot sequence. Set it to boot from CD before hard drive in the boot sequence. Some systems can change the boot sequence without accessing the BIOS, laptops for the most part do not need to access the BIOS.

Since XP is now on Service Pack 2, if your XP CD does not include SP2, I highly recommend creating a slipstreamed XP CD with SP2 to use for the Clean Install.

If setup returns a message the partition contains the setup files and cannot be deleted use the info from this link: Delete NON-DOS Partition

10c If you intend to use multiple partitions, or dual boot, this is where you specify the size of the boot partition and or setup location for XP. If you are planning to dual boot XP, I would create a small 100 meg DOS partition for the first primary partition, then an 8 to 10 gig partition for XP. You can partition and format the remaining space after XP is setup from Disk Manager. If you do not intend to dual boot, you can either use all the un-partitioned space, or create an 8 to 10 gig partition for XP and leave the rest free to partition later.

Choose the file system from this screen. If dual booting and you created the small 100 meg partition, make it a fat partition. NTFS is configured at the optimal file size during the initial setup. See this link for more on NTFS

Press Enter to continu

Setup will show a progress box and reboot when copying files is complete.

Personalize your XP Enter your Name and Organization.

The XP loading window will now display after reboot.