If your copy of Windows was supplied to a large business or institution
(including some government and educational organizations), the EULA may
allow transfer of the operating system to other computers and allow installa-
tion or upgrade over a network.
And things reach another level of complexity if you upgrade an older version
of Windows to a current edition. Your EULA for the upgrade version specifies
that you cannot sell or give away your old operating system disks; the origi-
nal product and the upgrade product are considered a single unit. I doubt
that the secret police are going to come to check the dusty shelves of your
closet for old copies of Windows; they are much too busy checking to make
sure that scofflaws have not cut the product tags off pillows. However: You
may find that someday down the line Microsoft will once again ask you to
prove you still own the original disk as part of a future upgrade to your
upgrade.
Basic Windows XP installation
In the easiest situations, you can simply insert the Windows XP CD-ROM into
your laptop’s CD or DVD drive and restart the computer. As I have discussed,
the system BIOS or Setup Software should be instructed to check the CD as
one of its possible boot devices; if the hard drive is blank and there is no
boot disk in the floppy disk drive, the CD is checked for the purpose.
You see a message along these lines: “Press any key to boot from CD.” I trust
you can figure out what you’ve got to do at this time. (Hint: Press a key.) At
the Welcome to Setup screen, press the Enter key to begin the installation
and configuration of Windows XP.
Follow the instructions you see onscreen to select and format a partition for
the installation of the operating system (the active partition) and the location
for other applications and data (which can be in the same partition or in a
separate one).
The installation process for Windows XP can take more than an hour, and
you’ll be called upon to make a number of decisions and settings, including
your local time zone and display options. If your machine is attached to a
local area network (LAN)or to a broadband Internet connection, you are
asked to match the machine to the needs of either or both connection.
Depending on your machine’s configuration, you may be asked to reboot
your computer once or more during the process. This is especially the case
if you are upgrading a previous installation of Windows; the new operating
system will spend some time searching out all the existing hardware and soft-
ware to look for any incompatibilities or needed drivers updates.
Floppy disk or network boot
The option to boot a system from a floppy disk drive dates back to the earli-
est DOS (Disk Operating System) of the PC, but we have probably seen the
Chapter 17: Installing a New Operating System or Migrating Upwards 263