Installing Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2

Hi All,

I am back again and I would like to thank you all for your precious comments. I know you all were waiting for my next post impatiently, I really apologize for the delay.

As you know preparing on technical matters is not an easy task. I was preparing the material for this exclusive post.

Thanks again for your comments and encouragements for continuing this section. With this I begin my blog below:


Today I am gonna give you step-by-step instructions to install Windows XP SP2. Many of you must be thinking that what's new in Windows XP installation as everyone who owns a computer system now-a-days is smart enough to install the Operating System. But please keep in mind that there are many things you still need to know about the installation. What I will tell you is the process using which you can install Windows XP in a very professional way. For your convenience I will also paste some screen shots so you can get the actual feel of installation.


To install Windows XP or any Operating System  you should have installation media of that particular operating system. In our case, the installation media is Windows XP Service Pack 2 CD Rom.


After inserting the CD in your CD Drive you need to configure your machine to read the contents from the CD. This configuration can be done by going into the BIOS Setup of your computer. To enter BIOS Setup, you need to press 'Del' key repeatedly just after you have powered on your computer. If you have pressed 'Del' key with proper timings, the following screen will appear.

This screen is Main BIOS Screen which gives almost all the information about the Motherboard and Processor in your system. You need to go to Boot option in order to configure you machine to read the contents from CD first while getting started. Boot option screen will look as below.

After this you need to select Boot Device Priority using which you can tell the computer to read the contents from CD ROM Drive and load the files into the memory. The screen will look almost similar as below.

 

Then you need to select CD ROM instead of any other device which may be already set. Same as below.

Once you have selected CD ROM Drive as First Boot Device you can save the changes you have made and can restart your PC. To save configuration you need to either press F10 function key or should manually go to exit tab using arrow keys. Refer the screen shot below where I have used F10 key to save the changes I have made in the configuration and to quit.

After saving the configuration in BIOS and rebooting your system, if you are installing Windows XP on a blank hard disk drive, the following screen will appear.

And then the installation files will be loaded.

After this, the installation process will start in Text Mode (Blue Screen Installation where mouse cannot be used). User interaction is also required to run this mode of installation. The screen will be displayed as below asking user to press appropriate key to run Windows XP installation.

Here if you are installing Windows XP (as in this case we are installing Windows XP) you need to press Enter. (I will explain other options later). As you will press Enter Key you will be presented with End User License Agreement (EULA) page. If you want, you can go ahead and read the entire agreement. After reading the agreement you need to press F8 function key as shown in below diagram.

After pressing F8 key, as we are assuming that this installation is being done on a brand new hard disk drive, following screen will appear on your monitor. If you want to assign the entire disk space for C: drive you can press Enter Key. As you will do so Windows will automatically create a single partition, drive C:, of the entire disk space and the setup will continue. But today we will learn how to create partition.

As shown in the above screen, you will be presented with the blue screen displaying Unpartitioned Space, and the space that is available for partitioning. The size will be the size of entire hard disk depending upon its total size. This is because, since there are no partitions in your hard disk drive till now, therefore Windows XP gives you the ability to create a single partition out of the entire disk space available. Please refer to the following screen shot which says that in order to create partition you need to press 'C'.

Once you have pressed 'C' to create the partition you will be shown the below screen which will enable you to specify the size of the very first partition you are about to create that is drive C:

In the above screen shot as you can see that entire disk space is selected as default. If you are a home user and you are installing Windows XP on your desktop or laptop PC you should specify a definite size for drive C:. In our example we will assume that the total size of the hard disk is 160 GB and we are assigning 15 GB for drive C:. As 1 GB = 1024 MB and size that should be specified in this space should be in megabytes and we want to specify 15 GB for drive C: we need to multiply 1024 x 15 = 15,360 MB. In round figures most people define this space as 15,000 MB. (Please Note That  The Calculations Done Here Are Just Examples and You Are Free to Choose and Specify Disk Space According to Your Wish and Will).


After specifying the appropriate disk space you will be promoted with the following window:

As the above screenshot shows, you will now have a partition named C: and since this partition is not formatted it will display "Raw". Now from this point you have a partition and you need to install Windows XP on this very partition itself. You need to press enter to install Windows XP on this partition. Below is the screenshot which will show you the next screen that appears once you press enter.

As you can see in the above screenshot there are four options and you need to choose any one of them. Now, here's the point. As you are a simple home user and there is no one else other than you who will use this system it would have to worry much about the security. However, you never want anybody else to enter your computer even without your permission. So a little bit of security is essential. If we see the things from technical point of view and the difference between all these four options are specified below:

• Format the partition using the NTFS file system (Quick):- This option means that when you format your drive C: using this option your drive will have some additional security. If you follow the recommendations of Microsoft your computer will never get hacked and/or no viruses can ever enter your computer. You can choose this option if your hard disk is new and you are 100% sure that there are no viruses in it. This option when selected will do a quick format of your newly created drive C:.
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