[trancex23]

Hi, i just bought an AMD 3200+ 80gb sata hd 1024mb coscair value with only the hard-drive formatted but i have no clue how to install xp whatsoever. I have the cd and the key but i dont know what to do to install it thru bios and i dont wanna mess anything up. Ive'read tutorials but i find it complicating b/c i dunno if my system is apci and which apci is it or what ntfs or fat32 is or what raid is. Can sum1 plz give me a step by step tutorial on how to do a clean xp professional install on an AMD 3200 thru bios? Thanks alot!

[basketofkittens]

It's really not as complicated as it might seem. What you have to do is make sure that the cdrom drive is set so it's bootable. If you give me the make and model of your motherboard I can tell you exactly how to set that option. After you've set that up all you have to do then is insert the Windows cd in the drive and reboot the computer. The computer will see the Windows CD and strart booting from it, thereby starting the installation. I don't recall the exact steps, but I do remember that it will start loading drivers (you'll see device names flashing by on the bottom of the screen). After it's done loading drivers it will show you a welcome message and prompt you to press some key to continue the install. Immediately after I think it will have you select which drive you want to install too. Since you (presumably) only have one hard drive in your computer there will only be one drive option to select. After you select the drive you'll probably have to format it. You'll want to pick NTFS as your filesystem. It's going to give you some standard confirmation prompts before it formats, so don't worry about that. After the formatting is done the setup will need to reboot the computer. Take the CD out of the drive and let it reboot. The setup will continue automatically and prompt you to insert the CD again. I think this is where it asks you for a CD-key, so enter that. Now let it sit and do the actual installation. There'll be a couple more prompts after that but they're all pretty much self-explanatory.

Hopefully this helps. Good Luck.

[Jamsan]

http://www.tweak3d.net/articles/xp-install/

[trancex23]

thx trembley, but in the tutorial it said if u dont set up the right acpi configuration or w/e it could mess u up later on, and i know nothing about this. My MB is an evga nforce 4

[ThatHideousStrength]

I never recall messing with a ACPI config when installing a Microsoft O/S

[SoulAssassin]

Trance, you'll be fine - don't worry about the acpi shit. Just turn on the computer, pop the CD in and when it says "Press any key to boot from CD" hit the spacebar or any key. Then follow the directions, you can't really screw it up.

[Drago]

On thing tho, make sure your "F" keys are functioning. Some keyboards have the upper/lower case feature with the "F" keys. At some point you will need to hit, i think, F8. They will instruct you which one to hit. I was installing xp for the first time on a friends build and couldnt figure out why I couldnt get past that part of the install.