Windows XP can be installed from a central location or locally. The pre-installation of any operating system is more important than the installation process. Technicians that grab a disk or CD and load a new operating system without going through a logical process are just asking for trouble. There are two major portions of any new operating system installation¬hardware and software. The hardware and software already installed in the system must be compatible with the operating system and researched before any installation steps are taken. The steps to be taken before installing Windows XP are outlined next.

•Decide whether the installation will be an upgrade or clean install and which version of XP is to be loaded
• Determine the file system (sl to be used
• Decide whether the computer will have more than one operating system installed
• Scan for viruses
• Determine if the hardware is compatible
• Obtain any drivers. upgrades, or hardware replacements
• Decide if the software applications are compatible
• Obtain any patches. upgrades. or software replacements
• Delete any unwanted files and uninstall any unwanted applications
• Back up any data files necessary
• Remove any power management or disk management tools

The first decision to make when planning to install Windows XP is whether to upgrade from another operating system or perform a clean install. A clean install puts an operating system on a computer without one, or the computer's existing operating system is removed (the hard drive is formatted). There exist three reasons to perform a clean install:

• The computer does not have an operating system already installed
• The computer's current operating system is not upgradeable to Windows XP
• The computer's current operating system is upgradeable to Windows XP, but the existing files and applications are going to be reloaded

If the decision is made to upgrade, then determine which operating system has already been installed. Windows XP Professional supports upgrading from Windows 98, Windows ME, NT Workstation 4,2000 Professional, and XP Home Edition. Windows XP Home edition only supports upgrades from Windows 98 and Windows Me. When Windows XP is installed as an upgrade, the user's applications and data are preserved if the operating system is installed in the same folder (directory) as the original operating system. If Windows XP is installed in a different folder, then all applications must be reloaded.

If any of the following situations exist, Windows XP Professional should be used.

• A computer has multiple processors. Windows XP Professional supports two processors. Multiple processors are normally used on a database or web server. If the computer runs an application that does intense computations such as financial or scientific applications; or graphic rendering such as a game uses. then Windows XP Professional is the gest choice.
• The computer is in a networked environment and remote access to the computer as if you were there, is desired.
• File system encryption is needed.
• The computer is in a networked office environment.

Another decision you must make if upgrading to Windows XP is whether or not to convert the hard drive partition to NTFS. Once a partition is converted to NTFS, the partition cannot be changed. If you are unsure whether or not to convert the partition, leave it unchanged and later use the CONVERT.EXE program to upgrade. Most people want to convert the partition to NTFS for the following reasons:

If it is upgraded from a prior version ofNTFS, the drive is automatically configured for XP's NTFS. If any older NTFS volumes are not powered during the installation process, the volume is automatically upgraded when the drive is mounted. If you want to dual boot between Windows NT 4 and Windows XP (have both operating systems loaded), make sure that NT Workstation Service Pack 4 or higher is installed because some of the features in XP's NTFS change the data structure on disks. The CONVERT command can be used to change a FAT16 or FAT32 partition to NTFS5. The format of the command is CONVERT x: /fs:ntfs (where x: is the drive to be converted to NTFS).