The installation of Windows is relatively easy. Push the power button on the
front of the PC, put the CD-ROM in your optical drive, and follow the on-screen
instructions (you may have to restart with the CD in place). If you are doing
a Windows-only install, just allocate all of the hard drive to XP. Again, for a
Windows only install, the NTFS file system is faster and more efficient.
Some people find that it's useful to create separate partitions for the operating
system and data. This means that if something goes wrong with the
operating system, the partition can be formatted and the operating system can
be reinstalled possibly without losing data.
If you are installing Windows on a RAID drive, or a SATA drive in some
cases, you are going to have to provide drivers to the Windows installer so that
it can access the hard drive on the raid controller. To do this during the Windows
install wait for “Press F6 to install any third party SCSI or RAID drivers.”
to appear at the bottom of the screen and duly hit F6. Then you will see a
screen that says “Setup could not determine the type of one or more mass storage
devices installed in your system, or you have chosen to manually specify an
adapter.” At this screen you are going to want to hit ’S’ to “Specify Additional
Device,” another screen will pop up asking you to insert the floppy disk containing
the drivers, followed by a screen asking you to choose the appropriate
driver out of the set contained