Install XP on a Hard Drive Partition

The first thing you need to do is format the partition you will to use for the install. If you are running Windows on the machine already on another partition, this can be accomplished easy enough. Simply right-click on the "My Computer" icon on your desktop and choose "manage" in the pop-up menu. This will bring up the Computer Management interface with a tree on the left hand frame. You can also get here by going through your "Control Panel" and double-clicking on the "Administrative Tools" icon. From there you will double-click the "Computer Management" icon. Once in the "Computer Management" console, look in the frame on the left-hand side at the tree. Under "Storage" in that tree you should see "Disk Management." Click and highlight it. You will then see in the right hand frame a list of all the partitions on your hard drive. One will be your "C:" drive which is the main partition on the disk. You cannot format the drive on which you are working so the new XP must be installed on a blank partition. This partition will have already been given a drive letter by Windows. It could be "F:" or "G:" or something else, depending on how many drives have been attacked to the machine. You can right-click on the partition you are going to install XP on and choose "format." This will bring up a menu box asking you the type of format you want to do. You must choose the "NTFS" file format. Once the new partition is formatted in "NTFS" file format you are ready to install XP. If you do not have a secondary partition you will need to create one but that is another tutorial altogether that is best done with some partitioning software. Your next step will be to insert your Windows XP disk and then immediately shut down your computer. Then you will restart your computer and the XP install screen should start first. You will be asked to answer some questions about the install. Read the questions carefully and choose the correct option for your needs. Once you get through the basic prompts you will be asked if you would like to see the list of optional partitions, to choose which partition XP will be installed on. Make sure you choose the same drive letter of the partition you just formatted. Do not choose to install XP on drive "C:" as this will install over your existing operating system. XP will then ask you to choose the size of the install. You can use the entire blank partition, or you can choose as little as five gigabit of space. Unless you plan to install another operating system on the drive it is best to just use all the available space. XP install will also tell you to reformat the partition. But since you already did a format through disk management, you can choose a "Quick Format" here, which will take less time. Either option will work. Once the install is done you will have a dual boot option. A good tip is to modify your "boot.ini" file so you have more time to choose which operating system you would like to boot up. Default time is either three or five seconds. Set it to 10 to 15 seconds or more so you have time to choose which operating system you want to boot.

Source:

Microsoft: How to partition and format a hard disk

Tweak Hound: The Right Way To Install Windows XP

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