Required Items: This depends on the version of Windows to be installed and if partitions are desired. In cases where a partition(s) are desired I suggest a Windows 95 or 98 boot diskette to boot the system and use FDISK. If you are just reinstalling Windows 9x versions a Windows Recovery Diskette in most cases will provide a format option. It is often helpful to have a few Blank formatted Diskettes. You will of course also need a CD of Windows ideally the CD from the maker of your computer provided you have not changed your hardware to a great extent, or if you have, a Full Install CD of the desired Windows version. ( not upgrade CD unless you have a prior version of Windows CD to work from and meet the requirements to install with a update CD. If you are planning on installing Windows XP, 2000, or ME you may need to obtain a boot diskette set from www.bootdisk.com in some cases if you do not have provisions to make the diskettes. In cases of Windows 2000, there is a folder that will allow you to make the diskettes provided you can boot up on a Windows 95/98/ME diskette. ( for most I also suggest Extra Strength Aspirin be at hand )

Reinstalling Windows from scratch can be a problem to say the least. Since it is not something most people do on a day to day basis and even software people tend to avoid doing this due to the time and work it takes to fully restore everything it is often confusing at best to get Windows back into operation. Here are some basic things to try to do and guilds to get you going.

Needless to say it is best to have backups of such files as your addressbook and favorites or bookmarks. Most browsers and mailers have a provision to make an HTML backup of these files which you can save to diskette and then use once you have the operating system reinstalled. Just be sure if you are doing the reinstall due to a virus infection, these files are free of virus attachments also as you would end up with an infection again.

First if at all possible get a Windows Boot Diskette (Win95/98) or Recovery Diskette (2000, ME, XP ) made. If you are using Windows 2000, ME, or XP it is not a bad idea to have a Windows 98 boot diskette if you can get a hold of one also with the CD ROM driver support included. If for example you totally loose your hard drive due to a failure it may be needed to get you to the point where you can reinstall Windows. You can obtain the files to make such a Diskette(insert link) here. In some newer systems you can select to boot the system with the CDRom drive with a driver in the BIOS of the system, however if your system lacks this feature, you may end up needing to get ahold of a boot up diskette or diskettes depending on the version of Windows you plan on installing. See the link above to obtain a bootdisk if you do not have one or do not know how to make one. In the case of Windows 95/98/ME you should need only one diskette. In the case of Windows 2000 you will need 4 blank diskettes, and Windows XP you will need 6 blank diskettes to make a boot disk set. See the bootdisk site for information about the requirements for other versions of Windows.

The next major pitfall is usually the confusion over the types of Windows CD's available. Most major computer makers supply their machines with what is called a Restore CD. These generally speaking are only useful for the system that they were included with or others from the same company build about the same time. Or to put it another way you will likely be very disappointed if you replace the motherboard on your Pentium 2 - 233mhz system with a newer Pentium 4 -1.6ghz motherboard-processor and expect to use your copy of Windows 98 for you Compaq Presario for an operating system. Usually you will get an error message from Windows saying it is searching for drivers for the new hardware it has found and that will be as far as you will get. If you have a Windows 98 restore or full install CD you may be able to recover this at that point. Other options generally are pretty hit and miss. In the case of XP systems without a restore CD, you need to depend on the Windows XP restore function which can be a problem. If you are a registered owner of one of these types of systems you may be able to contact the system manufacturer and obtain a restore CD for your system. Otherwise you would need to purchase a new copy of Windows XP to fully format and install.

In cases where you have RAID or SCSI drive controllers, you may need to make a diskette with the drivers for the controller you have and pay close attention when starting the Windows install process to press the F6 key at the correct time so that when the drivers needed for your controller are to be loaded the install process will ask for them when required - generally after the second Windows diskette is inserted and loaded. If you fail to take this step you will need to restart the install process from scratch.

Real live Microsoft Windows upgrade CD's will usually require a prior version of Windows in some form to be found for the upgrade CD to work. If you do not have some trace of Windows on the hard drive it will generally suggest you need the full install CD. If you have an upgrade CD which you are working from you need only have a full install copy of any prior version to the version of Windows you are installing. If you plan on going backward in Windows versions, you will need to get a copy of a full install version prior to the version you are installing. For example you cannot use a copy of Windows ME full install to install Windows 2000 Professional from an upgrade CD as Windows ME was released after Windows 2000. A Windows ME full install CD would work for Windows XP however. As far as I know full install CDs and upgrade CDs have all the same drivers available. The only difference is the requirement to have proof of a prior l version of Windows which can generally be met by having an old full install of any older version of Windows at hand. You will not need to even know the key for the older version of Windows just have the CD that can be placed in the CDRom drive when asked.

If you already have Windows NT/2000/XP and the drive is formatted to use NTSF, you may find that FAT32 ( and FAT16) is not going to recognize the NTSF partitions. You can remove the NTSF partitions however by using the tool from the MS Win3.1 tool kitlocated here from the Microsoft Website. You would need to download this file and then install the delpart.exe file on your Windows 9x boot diskette. Then boot with that diskette and run the delpart.exe program which should delete even NTSF partitions. Just be sure you are prepared as all data on the drive which this program is run on will be lost.

To start the install from a totally clean ( new ) hard drive or to add partitions to the hard drive this is the starting point. After your Plug n Play BIOS has found the evidence of the hard drive insert your Windows 98 boot up diskette. The diskette should come up and ask if you wish to install CD ROM support. ( for the first few steps in this you usually do not need it but it makes little difference if you say yes or no. ). After this you should see an A:\> prompt usually or it may be A:> depending on the batch file on the diskette. If the screen shows C:\> or C:> you would wish to type A: then hit enter. Type the following command FDISK. This should start a partitioning program know as FIXED DISK. Depending on the age of the system in question, it may ask if you wish to enable large drive support or if your FDISK does not seem to allow for partitions over 2GB it may be necessary to obtain a FLASH BIOS update for the motherboard in use on your system if possible. Consult the maker of your motherboard for details on how to obtain and install such updates to your system as it is beyond the scope of this article to fully cover that subject given the countless makes and models of motherboards available. If it is a old drive you wish to totally clear you would select remove existing DOS Partition. If it is a new or you have already removed the old DOS partition you can then select Create a DOS pirating. Depending on the size of the disk being used, you may wish to establish several partitions. Generally speaking 10 to 15 GB is about as large as you would wish to make partitions in most cases. If you hope to dual boot, or use two or more operating systems you would wish to provide additional partitions at this point as it is the best time to do so without possibility of data loss.

What is a partition and why do I want them? Basically partitions are Logical divisions of the physical hard drive. The simply means that the one physical hard drive and be divided up so it functions in most every way as two or more drives. This is not to say if you have a complete failure on the physical drive C it would not also be the case for all the other logical drives on that physical drive. As a rule if one logical drive fails the rest of the logical drives on the same physical drive are also at best suspect or ready to also have problems. However if you have more than one logical drive it is very possible to provide simple back up of important files and even run two or more operating systems on the same physically drive. The access to the files in some cases is limited but you do not need a separate physical drive to run say two different versions of Windows or Windows and Linux or whatever other pair of operating systems. Since Windows is in use on about 95% or more of the personal computers most of the instructions will be for that operating system. Also keep in mind FDISK displays in Megabytes. So if you have a 20 GB hard drive, it will be shown as 20,000 MB of space.

Once you have established to partitions to your satisfaction, we are to the point if moving onto the next step. If you have not go the sizes you wish please repeat the FDISK command as needed until you do so. It is not possible to change the partition sizes on the drive after you install data on it without loss unless you use software designed for the purpose of moving partitions around like Partition Magic While this is an excellent program it is not required if you are doing a full install and take the time to get your partitions set up correctly before installing any operating systems.

The next step is at the A:> or A:\> is to type FORMAT C: or FORMAT C: /s to install DOS system files, or FORMAT C: /u to format and totally remove old format information ( useful in some cases after virus infection ) or both FORMAT C:/u/s .... Note you can and will have to format each drive to be useful so the letter C used after the format command is the drive letter, and if you have more than one partition you would use the command FORMAT D: or FORMAT E: as required depending on how many FAT32 partitions you plan on having. As far as I know you can have several logical drives on a single physical drive. The limit of this is the number of letters available, so generally A and B are reserved for floppy drives, and one letter is generally reserved for the CDRom drive. So it would mean you could have up to something like 22 logical drives on Windows 9x and I believe you can assign drive letters AA, BB and so on to Windows NT type versions such as 2000 and XP so you may well be able to have up to 48 logical drives if one would wish to. I would not see any reason for this myself unless you were on some network where shared drives on other machines would need to be accounted for.

Keep in mind if you have more than one partition you would need to format each partition you plan on installing Windows on or some Windows install CD's may read the drive as not there or report invalid media type. Once done reboot the computer and install CD ROM support this time at boot up.

Place CD ROM in the CD drive and then depending on the driver installed ( generally it is Drive E or F but it does depend somewhat on how many partitions are found by the system BIOS when it reboots ) so note the CD ROM driver installed on the screen. If the CD does not autostart when you type the drive letter such as E: then hit enter, you may have to type SETUP at which point Windows should start asking the questions it needs to ask to install the Windows version on the CD on your machine.

You will need such things as your product license / code number during this process in most cases. You may also be asked to make a Windows Boot Diskette or Recovery diskette for the Windows version being installed. You should have a new Diskette for this purpose ( ideally formatted already ) If you used 3rd party software such as Partition Magic you will need to have diskettes for recovery using their software as well which are not the same as the Windows recovery diskettes.

If you wish to set up dual boot operating systems you may wish to consult my dual boot page on this website.

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