Chapter 2: Installing XP

First there is preparation. Obvious things like verifying that your equipment meets the requirements and is compatible with XP. Partitioning decisions. File system choice. Type of network you will be on. Whether to use Dynamic Updates or not. And about licensing. It recommends to create a checklist.

If you can, always use NTFS. If you have to dual boot with an OS that can't read NTFS partitions, then you may have to use FAT32.

The standard networking components are mentioned. And then also different ways to install XP. One way being over a network. It discusses winnt.exe and winnt32.exe and the switches that can be used with them.

Stop errors, and other errors you may encounter during setup. The BSOD and a number of log files are named and explained. The setupact.log has everything that happened during the setup, and the setuperr.log has just the errors.

Then WSUS is explained. The Windows Server Update Service is a service running on a server on a domain. It allows client computers to connect to it, instead of to the Windows Update website. This way bandwith use out to the Internet is limited to a minimum because only the update server has to go get them. Also updates can be managed.

Chapter 3 is about deploying Windows XP. Stay tuned for more.