RekaTech
Reka on Windows XP@www.RekaTech.co.uk©

Place your Windows XP cd onto your cd/dvd drive. I recommend you use a slipstreamed Windows XP cd, for more info read the article on "slipstreaming" Once you have inserted the disc, reboot your PC. After the PC reboots, you should get a message saying" boot from cd, press any key", if so press a key. This will start the installation of Microsoft Windows XP and you can move on to the next section "Partition".

However, if your PC has not booted from cd and started to install XP then you need to change the boot order. To change the boot order you need to go into the BIOS. Most PC's access the bios by pressing the delete button at startup, ie, reboot and keep hitting delete. Once in the bios, navigate to "boot order". Set it to boot from cd first and Hdd second, save and exit.

 

As previously mentioned, we will be splitting your hard dive into several partitions, they will act like virtual independent hard drives. This where you have to decide the size of the partitions according to how you use your PC and dependant on your hard drive size. Nowadays most people have a minimum of 80GB hard drive installed, so i will work on that basis. here is an example of the partition set up. (250 GB Drive added)

	C:/	Windows	10GB	15GB
	D:/	Programs	20GB	30GB
	E:/	My Documents	20GB	150GB
	F:/	Back up	20GB	50GB
	G:/	Scratchpad	5GB	5GB

What the partitions will be used for is self explanatory really, and as you can see Windows will be on a separate partition, meaning if you ever have to reinstall, all the other partitions will still remain , so no loss of work or saved files.

You can select the sizes of any partition, so if you have loads of music, make the My Documents partition larger, or even create a separate one for this. I recommend the C:/Windows partition to be 10GB~15GB, any larger and you will be wasting space!

Once you have decided on the partitions and sizes, you then need to create them. During the windows install, you are asked where to install XP. It will show you your hard drive size and any partitions. Delete the partitions so is shows as RAW, then create all the partitions you want, remembering that the first will be C:/, and you want that at 10GB. Once you have created all the partitions you want, select the first partition, and tell Windows to install XP into that partition. When prompted select format to NTFS, do not select quick format!

Now let Windows XP carry on with the installation, there is nothing else you need to do until installation is complete.