Installing a Clean Copy of Windows XP

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The trick to successfully installing a clean copy of Windows XP is how you answer the first few questions that the setup program asks. First, the setup program displays a list of existing partitions. You can either install Windows XP on an existing partition or remove them and repartition the hard disk. Unless you're unhappy with your hard disk's partitions, I'd leave them alone and install the operating system on an existing partition.

Otherwise, you can remove the existing partitions and create new ones. Repartitioning your hard disk using the setup program is far easier than writing about it, so I'm letting the Knowledge Base article, How to Partition and Format a Hard Disk in Windows XP do the talking for me.

Note: If you chose to install Windows XP on an existing partition, Setup is going to ask you whether you want to leave the partition alone or reformat it. You should choose to reformat the partition. If not, the setup program leaves behind the kind of leftover files you want to get rid of. Besides, you've already backed up your important stuff.

If Your CD Won't Boot

Skip this section if you can boot your computer using the Windows XP CD. Here are three other ways you can start the setup program.

Usually the easiest way is to start your computer normally (if you have an earlier version of Windows running on it), and then put your Windows XP CD in the drive. If the setup program doesn't start automatically, double-click Setup.exe in the root of the CD. The setup program asks you whether you want to do an upgrade or new installation, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

In the Installation Type list, click New Installation (Advanced), and then click Next. After providing your product key, accepting the license agreement, the setup program installs itself on your hard disk and then restarts the computer.

From that point forward, the process is almost identical to starting the computer using the Windows XP CD. In essence, the setup program copied the bootable portion of the CD to your hard disk to ensure that it starts properly.

The next option is to make a set of Windows XP bootable disks. You boot the computer using the first disk in the set and then provide each disk when prompted. This isn't such a bad way to go if you don't have a bootable CD-ROM. The Knowledge Base article, Obtaining Windows XP Setup Boot Disks shows you where to download the bootable disks for your version of Windows XP and how to create them.

The last option is more difficult:

Make a bootable MS-DOS disk. Unless you already have a bootable MS-DOS disk or an older version of Windows handy, making a disk is frustrating. Windows XP restores the ability to create MS-DOS bootable disks that Windows 2000 took away. Even if you can create an MS-DOS boot disk, you still have to add to it the CD-ROM device drivers. Boot disks are such a pain to create, that I keep one locked away for future use—just in case.

Partition and reformat the hard disk. The Knowledge Base article, How to Use the Fdisk Tool and the Format Tool to Partition or Repartition a Hard Disk describes how to use the Fdisk and Format tools to partition and format your hard disk. I don't use these tools, though. I use Gdisk, which comes with Symantec Ghost. The reason I like this tool is that it's many times faster than using the combination of Fdisk and Format. First, I type gdisk 1 /del /all to remove all of the existing partitions; then, I type gdisk 1 /cre /pri /for /q /y to partition and format the hard disk in one step; and the whole thing takes seconds.

Reboot the computer and start the setup program. After partitioning and formatting the hard disk, you have to restart the computer for your changes to take affect. Then, assuming that your MS-DOS bootable disk has the proper CD-ROM device drivers, insert the CD in the drive and run Setup.exe from the root. The setup program copies the required files to the hard disk and then restarts the computer. From that point forward, the whole thing looks a lot like the text-mode phase of setup that you learned about earlier.

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