First the ISO file needs to be burnt to a DVD (preferably at a speed of
between 1 & 2.5).
It is wise to put Vista on a seperate partition or hard drive. If you don't
have a seperate partition you need to create one. you can only do this if
you have free space on your hard drive. if you don't have free space because
windows xp is taking up all of your hard drive, then you will need thrid
party partitioning software to shrink the original XP partition (you need
around 10 to 15GB)
Don't try upgrading over XP. For one it takes two long. in my case almost 4
hours, but some have taken up to 14 hours to upgrade.
Don't use Vista if you are not prepared to have your system crash or for you
to loose data. remember it is a Beta operating system and is not stable.
Once you have your partition allocated for Vista you simply need to insert
the DVD into your DVD-Rom and restart you pc. A black screen will appear
and, within a few seconds you will see a message 'press any key to boot from
DVD' press any key and the installation will begin.
You will need the product key number to insert at the relevant screen. You
will then need to select the partitionm which you want Vista to be installed
on. After that just follow the onscreen directions ( which aren't many, but
you will need to select times zones, keyboard etc.)
If all goes well when vista has finally finished installing and restarts the
pc you will have a menu appear giving you the option to boot into Microsoft
Windows or Legacy Windows (the legacy one is Windows XP) Choose the
operating system you want to boot to and away you go.
Incidentally Vista doesn't contain many drivers so you may not be able to
get an internet connection or some of your hardware will not work - printers
webcams etc.
--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
The information in this mail is supplied "as is". No warranty of any kind,
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