Monday, April 21, 2008

Installing from the Windows 2000 and XP CD-ROM

When installing Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP from a CD-ROM, you will need to boot the computer from either the CD-ROM or from floppy disks. During installation, you will use some setup wizards guide you through the process. This process is similar to the installation of Windows NT 4.0. The installation of Windows 2000 Professional and XP has four basic steps:
  1. Running the setup program.
  2. Running the Setup Wizard.
  3. Installing networking.
  4. Completing Installation

You have several options to start the installation. On the Windows CD-ROM, you can run Setup.exe to launch the installation. Setup will then run either Winnt.exe or Winnt32.exe, depending on which operating system you are currently running. If you are running MS-DOS or Windows 3.x, Setup will run Winnt.exe. If you are running Windows 95/98 or Windows NT, Setup will run Winnt32.exe. You can also run Winnt.exe or Winnt32.exe directly. The Winnt.exe and Winnt32.exe files are located in the I386 directory on the CD-ROM. You can also start installation by booting from the Windows 2000 Professional CD-ROM or from the Setup boot disks.

Step 1: Run the Setup Program

The first step for installing Windows 2000 Professional is the text-mode portion of Setup, which is very similar to the Windows NT 4.0 text-mode portion of Setup. This portion of Setup copies the minimum version of Windows 2000 Professional to memory to begin the setup. You will have the option to run Setup, repair an existing Windows 2000 Professional installation, or exit Setup. Then you will have to agree to the terms of the license agreement in order to continue with Setup. The next step is to select a partition on which to install Windows 2000 Professional. You can choose an existing partition, create a new partition from free space, and even delete a partition to create free space. When deleting partitions, keep in mind that you will lose all the data on that partition. After you have selected a partition to install to, you will have to decide whether to use the FAT or NTFS file system. Then Setup will copy files to the hard disk and reboot the computer. Exercise 2-1 walks you through the steps for this phase of Setup.