Once you've completed that elaborate checklist on the previous pages, you'll be delighted to hear that the Windows 2000 Setup program usually runs very smoothly. All of the preceding warnings and preparatory steps are tantamount to wearing a belt and suspenders: It's better to be safe than sorry.
To upgrade from a previous operating system, follow these steps:
Start your computer.
The Windows 2000 Setup process is simplest when you start up from within some version of Windows.
Insert the Windows 2000 CD-ROM.
If you're asked, "Would you like to upgrade to Windows 2000?" click Yes, even if you plan to perform a clean install.
In any case, now the Welcome screen appears.
Click Upgrade.
See Figure A-1 for an illustration; see Section A.2.1 for help in choosing between these options.
Figure A-1. Click Next in the first screen of the Windows 2000 Setup Wizard to confirm your choice to upgrade. If Setup doesn't launch automatically when you insert the Windows 2000 CD-ROM, click StartRun, type D:setup.exe (replacing D with your CD-ROM's drive letter), and click the Install Windows 2000 link to begin Setup.
Click Next; accept the License Agreement.
If you don't click "I accept this agreement," you're kicked out of the installation process, so it's really no decision at all.
Choose whether or not to upgrade to NTFS (Figure A-2).
Figure A-2. Unless your system is already using NTFS, Windows 2000 will pester you to upgrade the drive to NTFS. See page 413 for a discussion of NTFS's considerable pros and very few cons.
Choose Yes to upgrade the drive to NTFS, or choose No to leave it with the current file system.
Click Next. Enter the Product Key.
In the Product Key box, enter the long string of letters and numbers on the back of your Windows 2000 CD-ROM case, and then click Next.
Now Setup copies files to your hard drive, restarts your computer into a text-mode Setup, copies some more files, restarts into Windows 2000, detects your hardware, configures your PC's components, copies some more files, and then restarts again into Windows 2000, for real this time.
There are two ways you can start the clean install process—either from an already installed version of Windows, or by booting your system with the Windows 2000 CD-ROM or setup disks.
If you already have a version of Windows, follow steps 1 and 2 of the preceding instructions. Then, at the Welcome screen:
Click "Install a new copy of Windows 2000 (Clean Install)." Click Next. Accept the License Agreement, then click Next again. Type your Product Key, then click Next.
For help finding the Product Key, see Step 6 of the previous instructions.
If your hard drive has several partitions, you can click the Advanced Options button at this point, turn on "Choose installation partition during setup," and then click OK.
Click Next.
Setup copies files to your hard drive, then restarts your computer into a text-mode Setup.
Press Enter.
If you selected "Choose installation partition during setup" in step 1, select the partition you want for Windows 2000 and press Enter. To delete a partition, select it, press D, Enter, and then L.
To create a new partition, select one of the unpartitioned disk space entries in the partition list, press C, enter the size of the partition in megabytes, and then press Enter.
Choose your file system.
If you chose an unformatted partition, you can now choose which file system to use (see Section A.2.1.3). If you chose an existing partition that doesn't use the NTFS file system, you can choose to convert it to NTFS (nothing will be harmed in the process).
Press Enter.
Setup may format or convert your selected partition, copy a bunch of files, and then restart your computer. All of this takes nearly an hour.
Before long, you come face-to-face with the Setup Wizard, described below.
If some version of Windows isn't already on the computer, start your PC from the Windows 2000 CD-ROM or from the four setup boot disks. To do so, use the following steps:
Insert the Windows 2000 CD-ROM and turn on your computer.
If you see a prompt asking you to press any key to boot from the CD-ROM, press a key. To boot from the floppy disks, insert the first disk before starting your computer. Insert and remove the disks as requested, until you're finally prompted to press Enter to begin Setup. (Do so).
Accept the License Agreement by pressing F8.
(If you don't agree, you can't install Windows 2000.)
At this point, continue with Steps 3, 4, and 5 of the preceding instructions.
After your computer finishes the Text mode phase, Setup restarts your computer into the Windows 2000 Setup Wizard. You'll be asked to specify your geographical region, your name, organization, computer name, administrator password (see Section 17.3), dialing location and prefixes, date and time, network settings, and workgroup or domain name (if any). As noted earlier, your network administrator can guide you with these technical settings.
When you click the final Next button, Setup does some more file copying; shows you a list of any problems it encountered; and finally, restarts your computer, which is now a full-fledged Windows 2000 Professional workstation.
If your computer is not part of a network, the first time you log on to Windows 2000, the Network Identification Wizard starts and offers you an important choice:
Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer. This is the standard setting. Nobody can use the PC at all without logging on to it, as described on Section 2.1.
Windows always assumes the following user has logged on. If you use your Windows 2000 machine at home or in a one-person office, and you don't much care about security, select this option; type in your name and password. You've gained some convenience, because Windows 2000 won't ask you for your name and password every time you turn on the machine. But you've also disabled most security features of Windows 2000, and turned off the profiles feature that preserves separate settings for each person who uses this PC (see Section 17.4).
Tip
You can change your mind about the choice you make here at any time. To do so, choose Start→Settings→Control Panel. Double-click Users and Passwords. Click the checkbox at the top of the window, and then click OK.
Once you've made a selection, click Finish.