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Installations and Upgrades
All new Windows installations start with using FDISK(or 3rd party utility) to partition the drive followed by a reboot and then the formatting of the drive.
Windows 98 New Installation
In order to install Windows 9x the following minimum hardware requirements must be met. The system must be at lease a 486DX, 66MHz processor or higher, 16 MB RAM, VGA Video adapter and display, 225 MB free FAT16 hard disk space or 175 MB free FAT32 hard disk space.
Unlike Windows 95, Windows 98 does not have to be installed over another operating system such as DOS and does not require access to a FAT16 partition.
The typical method for installing Windows 98 is to boot the computer from the installation CDROM. This requires that the system's CDROM drive is bootable and that the BIOS is configured for this. First Scandisk will be run and if no errors are found, the GUI portion of the setup process will begin which includes the following stages:
- Preparing to Run Windows 98 Setup
- Collecting Information About Your Computer
- Copying Windows 98 Files to Your Computer
- Restarting Your Computer
- Setting Up Hardware and finalizing Settings
- Restart
Upgrade from Windows 3.x to Windows 95
This upgrade is performed by running Setup.exe located on the installation CDROM. When you upgrade from Windows 3.x to Windows 95, you'll find that settings in protocol.ini, system.ini, and win.ini are used to create the Windows 95 Registry. These files and any files with the .GRP extension are saved for backward compatibility.
Upgrade from Windows 95 to Windows 98
This is typically the easiest upgrade and involves loading the Windows 98 CDROM and executing setup.exe. This will lauch the setup program that will go through the same stages as for a clean install, however, any usable information that is available from Windows 95 will be used during the upgrade. Note that CMOS antivirus software can cause an upgrade to fail during the 1st stage of the installation process. Information about failures can be found in the SETUPLOG.TXT file. If Windows 98 is installed to a directory other than the Windows directory, all previously installed applications will have to be reinstalled.
For more in depth resources for Windows 9x installations, click here
Windows 2000 New Installation
For Windows 2000 Professional, the hardware requirements are:
- 133 MHz or higher Pentium-compatible processor
- 32MB of RAM minimum(64MB recommended; 4GB maximum)
- 2GB hard drive with a minimum of 650 MB of free space(Additional free hard disk space is required if you are installing over a network).
- Windows 2000 Professional supports up to 2 processors.
For Windows 2000 Server the hardware requirements are:
- 133 MHz+ Pentium-compatible CPU.
- 128 MB of RAM minimum (256 MB recommended; 4 GB maximum).
- 2 GB hard disk with a minimum of 1.0 GB free space. (Additional free hard disk space is required if you are installing over a network.)
- Windows 2000 Server supports up to four CPUs.
Before beginning any installation, you should check the Hardware Compatibility List(HCL) at Microsoft's website to make sure that your components are supported. If you have items that do not appear on the list, you should contact the manufacturer to see if they have updated drivers.
If you have a computer that will boot from the CD, then this is probably the way to go, otherwise you will be creating 4 setup disks using the makeboot.exe utility on the installation CDROM. Just like the NT 4.0 installation, we will start with the text based portion of the setup. You will be presented with an option to press enter to install Windows 2000. After you press enter you will read the license agreement and press F8 to accept. You will now be presented with a list of all of the disks and partitions that are on the system. Like NT 4 installation, you will have the option to create a new partition or select an existing one to install onto. Press C and you will arrive at the option to select NTFS, FAT or leave it the way it is. Files will be copied to your disk. After a reboot, the GUI based portion of setup will begin.
Windows 2000 is Plug and Play. The first portion of the GUI setup will detect your hardware and install drivers for it. Next you will have the option to select the locale for the computer. Then you will enter your name and orginization followed by the license key. After you click next you will be prompted for the licensing mode and will have the option of per seat or per server. Next, you will enter the computer's name and an Administrative password. Now you will see a list of services that you can choose to install. This will obviously vary depending on which services you will need to use on your network. Now you will be prompted to enter the date and time zone. The services that you selected in the previous step will now be installed. Now you will have the option to select whether you want typical network settings or want to specify custom settings and configure them accordingly. Now the install will finish and the machine will be rebooted.
Listed below are the possible upgrade paths:
| Current OS: | Upgrade to: |
| Windows 95 | Windows 2000 Professional |
| Windows 98 | Windows 2000 Professional |
| Windows NT Workstation | Windows 2000 Professional |
| Windows NT Server | Windows 2000 Server |
There is no direct upgrade path from Windows 3.x
For more in depth information about Windows 2000 installations, click here
Windows XP Installation
Windows XP installation requirements are as follows:
- PC with 300 megahertz or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233 MHz minimum required (single or dual processor system);* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, or AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended
- 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)
- 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available hard disk space*
- Super VGA (800 × 600) or higher-resolution video adapter and monitor
- CD-ROM or DVD drive
Installing Windows XP Professional from a CD-ROM to a clean hard disk consists of these four stages:
Running the Setup program - Partitions and formats the hard disk (if required) for the installation to proceed and copies the files necessary to run the Setup Wizard.
Running the Setup Wizard - Requests setup information about the local workstation where the installation is taking place.
Networking components - Installs the networking components that allow the computer to communicate with other computers on the local network.
Completing the installation - This final phase copies files to the hard drive and configures the final stages of the setup.
There are some noted differences in the Windows XP Professional installation and older Windows NT4 and Windows Professional installations.
The design of the installation program assumes that your system has the ability to boot directly from a CD-ROM or that you will use a Windows 95/98/ME boot floppy to begin installing from a CD. The ability to directly create setup floppies has been dropped from Windows XP. Setup boot disks are available only by download from Microsoft. The Setup boot disks are available so that you can run Setup on computers that do not support a bootable CD-ROM.
There are six Windows XP Setup boot floppy disks. These disks contain the files and drivers that are required to access the CD-ROM drive through generic PCI drivers and begin the Setup process.
If your computer does support booting from a CD-ROM, or if network-based installation is available, Microsoft recommends that you use those installations methods.
Setup will not prompt the user to specify the name of an installation folder unless you are performing an unattended installation or using winnt32 to perform a clean installation.
By default, the Setup Wizard installs the Windows XP Professional operating system files in the WINDOWS folder. If this folder exists on the partition you have chosen for the install, setup will warn you that you are about to overwrite the current operating system installed on that partition. In order to keep it (e.g. dual or multi booting scenario) you would need to choose another partition for the installation.
Once installation is complete, you must perform the product activation process within 30 days of installing.
The table below lists the upgrade paths available to Windows XP Professional and Home editions.
| Current Operating System |
Upgrade to XP Home |
Upgrade to XP Professional |
| Windows 98/98SE |
X |
X |
| Windows Me |
X |
X |
| Windows NT 4.0 |
|
X |
| Windows 2000 Professional |
|
X |
| Windows XP Home |
N/A |
X |
Dual Booting Windows 9x and Windows 2000
Note that Windows 9x is incompatible with drives/partitions formatted with NTFS and will not recognize them. The following information assumes that Windows 9x is already installed on the system. When you insert the Windows 2000 CD-ROM, you should be prompted that the CD contains a newer version of Windows and will ask if you would like to upgrade the existing OS or install a new copy. You will want to select new copy or else the existing operating system will be overwritten. The installation program will begin copying files to the hard drive and will then need to be rebooted.
Next, your drives and partitions will be displayed and will be prompted to select a partition to install Windows 2000 onto. If you select the same partition as the one that Windows 9x is installed on, make sure that you select the option to keep the existing file system intact instead of formatting it, otherwise you will lose the Windows 9x OS.
If you choose to install the operating systems onto different partitions, make sure that the Windows 2000 is not NTFS if you wish to be able to access that partition from Windows 9x. Furthermore, make sure that the boot partition is not formatted with NTFS or else you will not be able to boot into Windows 9x.
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