Continued from Part 1

It’s going to say press any key to boot from CD as long as you have the Windows XP boot to CD in. You can press, of course, any key to start the installation.

Once you’ve done that, the CD will take off and start to load a lot of files. This takes about a minute or two. I want to reiterate, beyourownit.com. We do custom videos by request, articles. We have a blog. We do reviews. We have a tech support forum. We have live chat a couple times a week with IT professionals to help answer your questions.

It’s all free, so stop by beyourownit.com, sign up for a free account, and start helping each other out. Ideally, one day, this isn’t just going to be me making videos. It’s going to be you guys helping each other out. But, again, we take requests, so email me at support@beyourownit.com if you have a request you’d like to get in, and we’ll do that.

After this is all set up here, I’m going to show you first basic steps and, really, the whole Windows installation is dummy proof once you get it started. We’ve already done the hardest stuff, basically. I want to tell you too, this is really the same for Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 98, 95, Millennium, 2000.

You can use this process for any of them. It may look a little different but it’s not going to be all that different. Once it’s loaded, it’s going to give us the hard drive information. I want to tell you a little bit about that to make sure that you know what you’re doing here.

You can either delete the partition completely, now remember, if you delete the partition, your files are gone. If you’re re‑installing Windows, you do not have to delete the partition. You can install it on that partition and then the computer’s going to ask you, “Do you want to delete the existing Windows copy?” I think it makes you press L, and that’s OK.

That’s a good way to troubleshoot. If you don’t want to back‑up your files and you just want to throw a fresh copy of Windows XP, there’s absolutely no reason to format your hard drive, or delete the partition, or any of that. So keep that in mind.

If you’re just doing it from a purely troubleshooting standpoint, that’ll work. You’ll still have to reinstall your software, but you don’t have to worry about accidentally deleting a file that you needed.

Now that it’s all done, it’s starting Windows. Basically, to get going, you press enter it says on the bottom, so we’re going to do that. Now it’s going to show us… oh, yeah, we’ll have to sign our life away to Mr. Gates by agreeing to his license agreement. Feel free to read that. I probably never have.

Now it shows us, OK, you already have Windows installed on this computer, that’s what this is saying. If you’d like to repair it, press R, which will install Windows over it. If you want to continue installing a fresh copy of XP, hit escape. which is what we want to do, we do not want to repair.

Now, here’s the difference. If you want to just blow away your old copy of Windows and install a new one without actually formatting or deleting all your files, you’ll just hit enter here and install it. If you want to delete everything and start from scratch, you’ll hit the D key to delete it, and then it will ask you to confirm twice by hitting enter and then L.

Now it’s totally blown away our partition space. We’re going to want to create the partition. It’s going to default to your maximum size. If you want to break it up and have like a C and a D drive for later. Some people like it, because you can put all your files on the D, but if you have to reformat and reinstall Windows, you don’t even have to worry about backing them up.

But, on the other hand, if your hard drive dies, you’re still SOL. They both still have the same hard drive. So, do what you like. I always use one big one, I don’t really care. Hit enter and there’s always going to have that eight megabyte swap for partition space, don’t worry about that.

Now it’s creating your C drive. Let’s hit enter to install. Now it’s going to ask you, “OK, how do you want me to format it?” That means, basically, it prepares the drive. NTFS or FAT are the file formats. It’s how your computer stores all files. I recommend NTFS, it’s more secure, I always had great luck with it.

The difference between quick and and a regular one is that quick just deletes the one file off the hard drive and it’s less thorough, but it has the same effect. I always recommend doing the actual partition, not the quick version, but for this, we’re just going to do the quick to give you an idea.

It’s going to start formatting now. Depending on the speed of your computer, this could take a while. I did the quick format. It usually sticks at 20 percent for while so don’t spaz out and think your computer locked up. That happens on this install. A lot of times I see in XP, things will start… they’ll appear that it’s locked up but it’s actually still installing.

A good way to test this is to just hit the number lock key and see if the light on your keyboard lights up. That’s how I always used to test it. Or caps lock. If it lights up, it’s probably not locked up. It may just be stuck on a file or stuck somewhere.

Now you can see it’s done formatting. It’s going to start installing files. That’s it. That’s all that’s to installing Windows. I’m not going to bore you with the other 20 minutes of this video because I couldn’t bear to watch it myself. That’s all you need to know.

After it installs these files, there’s going to be some user interaction. The computers going to reboot and then you’re going to get the same menu where it says “Press any key to boot to CD”. You don’t need to boot to the CD anymore because it’s going to install the files to the hard drive now.

So, just let it go. When it’s done with this, just reboot, and then you have to put your CD key in. Which is typically located, if you buy your computer anywhere, located on the side of your computer. It’s a five, blast, five characters full of 25 numbers and letters. It will say product key.

Make sure you have this before you decide to format too because, without it, you can’t continue on. But the rest of it, just stick with the defaults all the way through the installation. It has you set up your time, and date, and stuff, but it walks you all the way through it.

So, we’ve done all this hard stuff. If you have any questions beyond this, I would like to take you all the way to the end of the install, but it’s just too much for anyone to watch.

We have a great forum on our website where you can ask questions. You can email me at support@beyourownit.com. We’re going to have this video posted on our website. You can use the message board right below it and post questions.

But really, we’ve done all the hard stuff here. Your computer is going to automatically install the files, reboot, automatically go through the next install, and, with a few user actions, you’re going to be done. Boom, you’re going to be done with Windows.

After you’ve completed the Windows installation, I always say the first step you should do is get your drivers installed and then get an antivirus program installed. Remember, AVG is free. So go with that. Then worry about copying your data back if you’re going to do so.

Get your antivirus on there and update it. Remember, if you have problems with drivers or you’re looking for anything, remember to look in My Computer. If you have a Dell, or an HP, or any of that, it’s probably automatically going to reinstall when you reinstall Windows.

But if it doesn’t, worst‑case scenario, you could open the side of your computer and look at the parts, using one of my other videos and identify what they are. They should say it right on them what they are. Then you could just hit Google, type in their name, download the driver, you’ll be good.

But, again, remember, formatting deletes your files, so make sure you back‑up and make sure you have drivers ready to go. If you’re using the manufacturers reinstall CD, like from Toshiba, or Dell, or whatever, they’ll probably have everything all on it, as long as you didn’t install anything aftermarket. But you want to keep that in mind.

I hope this helped you guys out. Like I said, it’s probably going to be a two‑parter because I upload my videos to YouTube. Remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel because we love you and we’d like to feel the love back sometimes. Check out our website and remember to make your requests.

We love hearing them, we got a lot of requests this week. We had probably 30, 40 new users sign up this week. So it’s been a great week for beyourownit.com. Keep your questions coming, and keep using the forum, and we’re here to help. Have a great day.