How to Install a New Operating System on Your Computer

1. First, back up all of the data that you want to save, such as Drivers (including NVIDIA network bus enumerator, display adapters, IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, network adapters, system devices, VSO devices), pictures, music... Use blank CD's, PIN drives, Floppy disks, external hard disks, backup disks, ect. If your computer is totally screwed up and only boots to a screen claiming that a bootup file is corrupt, you need to CAREFULLY remove the hard disk and either mount it on another computer as slave drive, or use an IDE/Serial ATA to USB converter, to back up the information.

2. If you have had to remove the hard disk, re-mount it on your computer, and then insert a bootable operating system disk. To boot up from it, you may need to temporarily change your BIOS settings. Every computer has a different way to do this, you can find out in your owner's manual.

3. Configure the computer to boot from the CD drive if the OS is on CD, Floppy Drive if the OS is on Floppy, etc. (NOTE: If your OS is on Floppy, then you need to enable 'Boot Up Floppy Seek.' You will know when this is enabled, for when you boot up, your floppy drive will make a 2-3 tone buzz.)

4. Wait for the setup to load. When it's loaded, format your C:\ Drive, and start choosing the options. For instance, choose the installation to be full if you are on a desktop computer.

5.Make sure you have your product ID number ready, as it may ask you what it is at any time.

6. When the OS is installation is "complete," reboot, and then the real installation begins. Wait a few hours as the files are copied. Once again, have your product ID ready.

7. When you finally have finished the installation for real, you will logon, and be free to change the rest of the settings as you like.

8. After you install it, change your BIOS settings back to how you had them.

How to Install Drivers for Hardware from a Website

1. Know that if you are not using Microsoft Windows, seek instructions other than the following ones;

2. Find the brand and model number of your piece of hardware. There are several ways of doing this, the easiest is to see if it came in a box and that will give all the information you need. Sometimes the hardware has the brand and maybe even the model number if you can find it.

3. Go to the manufacturer's website. Usually the website is just the manufacturer's name plus a ".com" For example, if you had a hp 1100 deskjet, you would go to hp.com. Also, if you had an Msi ATI 1300 video card, you would go to the msi website. If the manufacturer's website plus ".com" doesn't work, go to a search website such as google.com, and type in the manufacturer's name and usually the first result is the website you want to go to.

4. Find information and drivers for your hardware. Once you are at the website, find the support section, this is typically at the top of the screen, and click. Find the text box that tells you to find support for your product or something like that. Type in the product model number and select your product from the search results. Once you are at the product home page, find the section for the list of drivers.

5. Choose which drivers that are best for your computer. There are probably many drivers download available, so you have to be careful about which ones you are going to download and install. First, find all the drivers that have your operating system listed. To narrow it down more, choose which driver is the higher version number for your operating system. Sometimes it shows 32 bit and 64 bit on the drivers, determine if your computer is 32 or 64 bit and choose from there.

6. Download the drivers. Once you have found the driver for your system, click the download button right next to the driver. Sometimes you will have to go through a series of download links to download it. If you click the download button and your website browser shows the website is trying to download the file, have the browser accept it. In a few seconds, depending on your computer, a box will show up asking if you want to save the file you are downloading or possibly run it, choose save and find a location you can easily find on your hard drive.

7. After the download is complete you must go through the complicated phase of being able to run the driver installation. Go to the wikiHow article on how to burn files to a disk and follow the instructions to put all the driver files you created onto a blank CD-ROM.

8. After you have put the drivers on the disk and finalized it, you must run the drivers off the disk. This step is necessary on most driver applications because when searching for the driver files, it only looks on the disk drive, not the hard disk drive where you would try to run the application from. Insert your disk into the CD-R CD, Combo, etc bay. Go to computer or my computer and right click your CD drive and then click open. Double click the file in the driver's folder that is and application and it will start the installation for your wonderful piece of hardware.

The important step: Backup your driver. When you reinstall the drive, it help to you save 5 min or more time.