In some cases, its easier and preferred to simply reinstall your operating system to resolve an issue with your computer, or if you build a new PC you will need to install an operating system.

My recommended minimum requirements for Windows XP is an AMD Athlon XP 2000+/Pentium 4 2gHz with 512MB RAM. I recommend an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+/Intel Pentium D or faster with 1-2GB RAM. There is no need to exceed 3GB, Windows XP will not recognize it. There is a 64-bit version of Windows XP that can address more than 3GB of RAM, but unlike 64-bit Vista it is not available to the general public and is not well supported.

Luckily, Windows XP is very easy to install. The hard part often is getting drivers for the various hardware components in your system. To complete this successfully, you will need a few different things. First, I recommend using a Windows XP CD with Service Pack 2 (SP2) built in. At the minimum, you must have one with Service Pack 1 built in, or Hard Drives over 137GB will be formatted as 137GB only. You will also need access to another PC with High Speed Internet Access, a DVD burner, and a blank DVD. Finally, the computer you are installing Windows XP on must have a drive capable of reading DVDs.

TIP: It is very important to unplug USB card readers and printers with card readers built in from your PC before installing Windows XP. Windows setup sees the card reader first and will assign a different letter, such as H or I rather than C to your hard drive. While this will not cause a problem with Windows nor a majority of the applications ran on your PC, some issues may arise with certain applications.

1. Insert the Windows XP CD into your PC and reboot. Most PCs will automatically boot from the CD. If the PC does not start to load Windows Setup or ask you to “Press any Key to Boot from CD”, reboot again. When the manufacturer’s logo appears, look for options such as “Boot Menu” and start tapping the key it shows. On most Dell PCs, this is the F12 key (stop tapping once the computer beeps, or it will throw a keyboard error), on most HPs its the ESC key. Some ASUS boards also use the F8 key, and some others use th F10 key. Be careful, though, F10 is usually the Recovery partition on HP’s, and for some reason, the Boot Menu on other models. Choose the CD/DVD drive from the list and hit enter.

2. It is important to note that many PCs with Serial ATA (SATA) or RAID Hard Drives will not install without going into the BIOS of your PC and configuring your SATA controller as IDE rather than RAID or ACHI. Most new motherboards support this, but many first-generation SATA controllers do not support this. Also if you are using RAID, you will not be able to set the controller in IDE mode and will have to add a driver for the controller. If your computer has a floppy drive, or you have a USB floppy drive, I recommend leaving the SATA/RAID controller in RAID or AHCI mode and placing the floppy disc containing the driver into the drive and pressing F6 when setup prompts you to before it begins loading driver. If your motherboard did not come with a floppy disc, use the utility on the CD to create a driver floppy disc. The alternative, mostly if you plan on working with a lot of machines and want to spend the time initially creating it, is to take advantage of the DriverPacks project. This is a project on the Internet that will add drivers for various components directly into your Windows XP CD, making a floppy disc unnecessary. I will not go into depth here on this subject, but there are many tutorials on how to use DriverPacks on the Internet.

2. If Windows is already installed on your PC, you most likely will be prompted to “Press Any Key to Boot From CD…”, so push any key and the Windows XP Setup will begin. Computers with blank hard drives will usually boot from the CD without prompting you to press a key. If you had to put a floppy disc in from step 2, begin tapping the F6 key until the prompt at the bottom to press F6 for additional drivers changes to press F2 for Automated System Recovery.

3. Follow the steps on the screen once it loads the files and get to the screen shown below for the hard drive partition. If you have a brand new/unformatted drive, skip to step 4. In this example, the drive currently has Windows installed on it. We need to get it so the only option on the list is Unpartitioned Space. So, select the partition with Windows on it currently, press D for delete, confirm once by pressing ENTER and then again by pressing L at the next screen.**THIS STEP WILL ERASE ALL DATA ON YOUR HARD DRIVE**

4. Continue erasing the partitions until you only have Unpartitoned Space as your option, as in the example below, and press ENTER to continue.

5. On the next screen, you will want to use the Arrow keys to highlight “Format the partition using the NTFS file system (Quick)” and press ENTER once again.

6. At this point, Windows Setup will format your hard drive and automatically copy all the required data to the drive. Your system will automatically reboot into Windows XP and begin stage 2 of Windows Setup.

At this point, Windows will reboot into the regular portion of the setup. This part of setup is very straightforward, and I will not go into detail here. Your PC will begin by detecting and installing hardware, then begin prompting you for basic information. It will ask for the product key on the packaging, your time zone, name, etc. When prompted for the network information or anything else you may not be sure of, you can simply click Next. If you do not know the function of a certain option in setup, then the default option will be fine for you.

After this portion completes, which may take anywhere from 20 minutes to 1 hour, the PC will reboot one more time, do some final configuration, and then take you to your desktop. At this point, your computer will most likely be missing drivers for your network card, sound card, video card, etc. Insert the CD that came with the components, or the Driver disc that came with your PC to install the drivers for all of the components, then reboot the system at the end.

Now, you will need to activate your copy of Windows XP. Simply click on the Start menu, go to All Programs, then click Activate Windows. Choose to activate over the Internet, click next, choose to either register or not (it is not necessary to register), then continue. Chances are it will activate over the Internet. If it does not, follow the steps to activate via Microsoft’s toll-free activation number.

The final step in configuring your Operating System is to install the critical Microsoft security updates. Open up Internet Explorer, and go to the following website: http://update.microsoft.com and choose to do an Express update. Your system will most likely download an update to Windows Update, then reboot. Follow the process again to let your PC scan for updates. Once it finds the required updates, click on Install Updates, and let your computer download and install the updates.

Congratulations, you have successfully installed Microsoft Windows XP. I recommend that you now head over to my page on AntiVirus and AntiSpyware and install applications to keep your PC safe from Viruses and Spyware.