Installing Windows
Work
with me.
The
computer in front of you, devoid of life and colours, saying when you switch it
on "No operating system"
or "Insert boot disk"
or similar is not broken.
In
fact, it’s probably working very well.
This
somewhat technical message is simply saying "Tell me what to
do". It is asking for some instructions. That Windows CD you have would be very useful
here.
Term: Operating System
Microsoft
Windows is not part of your computer. It
is the computers operating system. It is
the interface between you and the PC.
The computer talks in 1's and 0's, binary, this makes less sense to us
than a VCR manual does and therefore requires some work to 'talk' in our
language. Windows provides that bridge.
Think of it in
this sense, an office, and you are the big boss. You have an assistant, it is your assistants'
job to come to you with all the requests, complaints, recommendations, reports
etc from everyone else. This person then
takes your replies back to them. Windows
acts like this assistant. Windows
'interprets' the computers language into our own.
Microsoft
Windows is not the only operating system (OS) but it is the most common in the
home computer world. Some others are
Linux, UNIX, Solaris, FreeBSD and MS-DOS.
Term: Boot Disk
A floppy disk or
CD with enough instructions to start your computer to a certain point. Usually used for either installing an
operating system or for starting a basic OS such as MS-DOS, the Microsoft Disk
Operating System, the 'before Windows' OS.
OK,
now we have an idea of what is going on, let us see if we can't get our
computer running. Feel free to put your
Windows CD into your disc drive and reset (or power off and on your PC, don't
worry about shutting down, it is not necessary).
OK,
so you've started up (booted) your PC with the Windows disc in, now
either one of two things happened:
1. The
Windows installer has started and is now waiting for you to do something.
2. You
got the same message again.
If
you got the same message again, read the following paragraph, if not, skip to
the following section unless you are interested in why this would happen for
future reference.
BIOS Boot Setup
The
reason this would happen is if your BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) is
not setup to check your CD drives for discs.
This is not a difficult thing to change, so let's get this sorted
quickly and power on to the installation.
Reset your computer again, now look for the key combination to get into
your BIOS or Setup. The following are a
few standard messages:
•
Press F1 to enter Setup
•
<Ctrl><Alt><Esc> for BIOS
•
F1=BIOS
•
•
Press F2 for SETUP
You
are looking for a message before the
"No operating system"
or similar message comes on screen. Once
you are in the BIOS you need to find the 'Startup order' or 'boot order'
section. There is rarely ever a mouse
cursor to be seen in a BIOS so you will have to control this from the keyboard,
you will find the commands on screen somewhere such as 'select', 'save and quit',
'quit without saving' and 'change value'.
Term: BIOS (Basic Input/Output
System)
The BIOS, as the
name suggests, is the only set of instructions in your computer before you
install the OS. It allows you to tell
your PC where to find the instructions to startup from, to store the time
and date, and a few other settings. It
also monitors things such as your PCs temperature, fan speed and can even scan
for some viruses (I am not suggesting you don't need a virus scanner here!).
Term: Function Key
A little trap
you can fall into. When something says
press F1, or F5 etc it does not mean press F followed by 1, or 5. It is referring to the row of function keys
at the top of the keyboard, F1 through F12.
So here we
would press F2 – quickly!
Here we see some BIOS screenshots showing the appropriate
keys to press and what we are looking for, the ‘Boot’ options screen.
There
are many BIOS’s, you will have to search to find what we're looking for. Once you have looked through some menus and
found where you can select some 'boot devices'.
The recommended order for this is usually Floppy (A:), CD-ROM, Hard Disk
(IDE0). The names won't be exactly the
same, but use a little imagination to select these three. Select them as above, and then use the option
to quit and save.
Installing Windows
So
the Windows Setup CD should be loading, or loaded. I'm going to take this at a reasonable pace
but with screenshots for ease.
If you have got this far you should have seen or be seeing:
Setup is inspecting your
computer’s hardware configuration...
If you are, congratulations! You just completed what I usually find the worst part of getting a computer working, getting it to boot up. When the Setup program has finished loading you will see a screen similar to that shown below.
The Windows Setup introduction screen
This is pretty easy stuff, we want to set up Windows XP now, so we’re going to press Enter. On the next screen you will be asked to read and agree to the Windows XP licence, if you do decide to agree press F8, if you do not agree you will not be able to install Windows, and your computer will quite uselessly restart.
If you pressed F8 then you will be greeted with the following screen.
This screen shows you where you can install Windows,
you will be installing Windows onto a hard drive inside your computer.
Term: Hard drive
The hard drive is the ‘filing cabinet’ of your PC. It stores all your
information. It stores Windows, all your
other software, your documents and those badly taken photographs from last year
at the beach.
You may also find a hard drive referred to as a MSD (Mass Storage
Device) as that is exactly what it does, it’s a device for storing a large
amount of data.
A hard drive has to have at least one partition, these can comfortably
be thought of as the dividers used in the drawers of filing cabinets, the only
difference is that when hard drives are partitioned they actually appear in
Windows as separate hard drives, don’t let this confuse you.
The hard drive, or hard disk, is not
memory or RAM, and anyone whose says otherwise needs to read this book cover to
cover and possibly a few others too. We
will get to memory and RAM later.
Here we don’t need to bother with thinking about partitions, we’ll come back to these later on. Simply hit your enter key select the highlighted drive as the one to install Windows onto. Should you have more than one hard drive available it is usually best to use the one at the top of the list.
I am afraid I am going to assume something here. Sorry. I am going to assume here that this is a new computer and one which you do not wish to save any information from.
On the next screen you are given four options:
1. Format using NTFS (quick)
2. Format using FAT (quick)
3. Format using NTFS
4. Format using FAT
Term: Format
The term format
with reference to disks on computers means to delete everything on the disk in
question.
Terms: FAT and NTFS and Quick options
FAT stands for
File Allocation Table, and NTFS stands for the NT File System (NT was a version
of Windows a few years ago). These are
two different ways of ‘filing away’ the information stored on the hard
disk. NTFS is the newer more secure way
of organising the disk, it also tends to be faster.
When formatting
a disk you can do it quick or slow. This
seems silly, obviously you are going to do it the quick way right? Maybe. The slow option is of use. In the quick option you only delete the list
of files at the beginning of the disk so that it appears empty, but the data is still there if you know how to get
at it. In the slow option you actually delete
all the data, this makes it slow but it does mean your data is actually gone so
no one could get it back.
I recommend NTFS quick for simplicity and speed.
Once Setup has created a partition that fills the whole disk and formatted it using NTFS Setup will then copy all the files needed for Windows to be setup, sit back, make some tea (or whatever you prefer to drink while waiting, I personally prefer coffee) and wait.
Windows Setup copying files
Once this has completed the computer will restart and hopefully boot from the hard drive, if it doesn’t go back through the BIOS as shown before this time setting it to boot from hard disk instead of CD. Now the Windows installer will run through, now it’s time to drink the tea (or coffee) you made, you could also read the billboards on Setup if you want. This process does take some time but there is in fact a time indication on the screen so you have a rough idea of how long you will be waiting.
I would just like to take this opportunity to say that if your Windows CD is a manufacturers customised disc then you may not get some of these screens, don’t worry it’s just that they have customised this CD for you.
Part way through this installation you will be given the following screen.
The Windows XP installation screen showing language options
Now,
unless your manufacturer (or supplier) was a lovely person your language
settings will come set to “
Term: Click
Sorry if this
sounds patronising, but if you don’t know, it is frustrating. When ‘click’
is said it means to single left click with your mouse. Double click is to left click twice in quick
succession. Right click is to single
right click. Double right click is
rarely if ever used.
Term: Dialog
A dialog is
precisely what you see below, it is simply a window with options in.
Term: Tab
A tab is a ‘page’
of a window or dialog. For example there
are three tabs in the dialog shown below, namely: Regional Options, Languages,
and Advanced.
Term: Drop down list
A drop down list
is the highlighted (in this case blue) item below. When the down arrow is left-clicked a menu of
options appears, you can then select any option of that list.
The language option dialog
So now you know what I’m talking about, let’s get back to telling this thing what language we’re speaking.
Not to confuse the issue but if several people will be using this computer and they speak different languages you can set this up later, but for now we’re setting up the default language that the computer will normally start in.
So, here you click on the down arrow on both drop down lists and select your language, for example “English (United Kingdom)” and “United Kingdom”. After this click on “Advanced” and again use the drop down box to select your language and then click “Apply”. Finally, go to the “Languages” tab, press “Details”. Finally, we’re going to deal with that multi-language option. This tab shows two options, the top one allows you to select the default language, the bottom shows what languages you wish to make available. Please see the following diagram.
Yet more language dialogs
If
you want anything different to what is displayed under the “Installed services”
heading you can press “Add” and you’ll be given the smaller dialog shown above
where you can select another language before pressing OK. Back on the “Settings” tab we now see any
languages mentioned so far. Now, under
“Default input language” select what you wish the computer to use by default
(use the drop down menu). Once you’ve
done this you will see that your selected default language goes bold in the
list. Finally there is one other item
you may wish to do. Personally my
computer only requires British but here it shows US too so I select “English (
If you get a message saying that something cannot be removed at the moment and it will be removed later, don’t worry, as it says your changes will be made next time your computer is restarted.
So
now you’ve pressed OK you’ll be back where we started, click next. You’ll be asked for your name and company,
here you’ll want to type your full name and your company (if it’s a personal
computer just type in Personal under company or leave it blank). Now you’ve typed those in, press next.
Here we see the product code entry screen
The screen above shows what should come up next. Here you want to find your product code, this may be on the bottom of your laptop computer, on the back or side of your desktop computer, on the Windows manual or on another manual or disk. It looks as shown on screen. Once you found it enter it exactly as shown then press next. If you enter it incorrectly just try again until you get it right.
You will then be asked for a name for your computer, unless you wish to give another name for some reason, for example if you may be setting up a network later, just press next. If you do wish to give a name then remember it is only 15 characters long and cannot contain spaces or special characters.
Term: Network
A network is
where you connect two or more computers together to share resources (files,
printers, Internet connection for example).
You connect them through a network connection (funnily enough!). These can be a wired network or a wireless
network and come in various shapes and sizes.
On the next screen select a date by hitting the down arrow on the drop down list and using the calendar then select a time zone off the drop down list, and finally set the time if it is incorrect. Change the time by selecting the hours, minutes, seconds, and the AM/PM option one by one then either type in or use the up/down arrows to change the value.
If you are asked for some network settings here feel free to just use typical settings, they’re actually pretty good!
Windows Setup will now install more software and save these settings, let it play, have another mug of something and/or read some more billboards (well, the same ones again I’m afraid.
Windows XP on the last leg of the installation – we’re nearly there!
After this has done, your computer will reboot and with any luck Windows will start up. On most machines the first thing you will see is this:
This is normal, it simply means that Windows will turn up the resolution (the quality for a quick explanation) on your screen to make everything look better, if slightly smaller. Press OK. After you do, Windows will then ask if you can see the new resolution, if you can press OK. If you cannot read the message then obviously you wont be pressing OK since you cannot see it.
Term: User
Gone are the days when you all argue over what
background image you set, what screensaver, the colour of your windows
etc. Now in Windows each person, each
user, can have their own settings such as colours, sounds, start menu etc. This collection of settings forms the basis
of a profile. Since each user is given his or her own
profile, everyone can setup the computer in a way they like.
You will now be presented with the “Welcome to Windows” setup, this is where you select a few simple options and agree to the software licence. This is all very easy stuff, pressing next, clicking the “agree to licence” boxes, typing in the names of anyone you wish to use the computer and a finish button. This will all vary again depending on what sort of CD you were given but you can guarantee at least the first next, the users screen and the finish button. The setup may also try and connect to the Internet now unless you happen to be the person connected to a network with an Internet connection on there (I know, this is unlikely at best) you can press skip. The other screen you may see is the network name screen. As before, unless you wish to give your computer a name (and a description) you can skip or just click next.
Finish.
We’re done. Congratulations, pat on the back time, you can now tell people you can install an operating system.
Sounds a lot harder than it is though, doesn’t it?