Introduction

Ahh yes, wintertime is almost over. The snow is melting, it's beginning to warm up, and another big event is happening. No, I'm not talking about Ground Hog's Day or even Mardi Gras. I'm talking about my finally deciding to get off of my lazy bum and install this new software contraption from Microsoft called Windows XP Professional Edition.

I've heard all the rumors about how stable it is, how easy to use it is, how well games run on it, and now it's time to see if it can live up to all this hype. I will be using my own personal computer as the guinea pig and venturing into new territory. Boldly running an operating system I have never run before. So follow along with me on this little excursion and you can get a peek at this new operating system and how easy it is to install.

Gone are the days of planning a whole afternoon out for an installation that is only supposed to take 30-60 minutes, depending on the speed of your system. No more hour after hour long sessions of sitting at a boring screen with bad color clicking next, next, next, next, choosing options, next, next, next, reboot, next, next...well, you get the point.

After installing this new version from Microsoft, I was surprised at how few choices it requires from the end user during setup, and how well it is automated. Since this will be an upgrade, and not a full installation requiring a full format of my C: drive and fresh setup, we will be starting from within Windows. In this case, I am running Windows 2000 Professional. Nearly any other version may be upgraded as well (i.e. Win95, 98, 98SE, and ME). So here we go, on to the first step.