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(What's this page all about? See home page for Purpose and Scenario.)
www.geocities.com/dt2pc ~ Last updated: July 2004
At this point, my brand new computer has been assembled. I've already backed up all of the data that I want to keep onto CD-Rs, and I have all the software I will want to install ready to go. Here are the CDs I've prepared or bought close-to-hand:
Windows XP Professional (original)
Application CDs (such as Office XP, Norton SystemWorks, various games, etc.)
Data backup CD (burnt with My Documents, my Favorites folder, an exported .PST file of my Outlook data, and so forth)
TheOpenCD (from TheOpenCD.org, aka http://theopencd.sunsite.dk/)
Programs backup CD (burnt with setup utilities for various programs)
That last CD is worth mentioning. I was able to save myself quite a lot of time (while waiting for my new computer parts to arrive anyway) by downloading and burning to a CD-R all the applications that I'm going to want installed on the new computer. Basically I came up with this list by looking through my Start menu and the Add/Remove Programs applet in the Control Panel. Here's some of what I put on there, in case you were curious:
Programming tools (ActivePerl, MiKTeX, etc.)
Utilities (Anti-virus software, adware remover, etc.)
Drivers for various hardware
Games (small ones that I've downloaded, etc.)
Players and viewers (Adobe, Macromedia Flash, etc.)
CDBurnerXP Pro 2.2.9 (Good eye -- you're right, I don't have a CD burner on this computer. But I wanted a backup of this program because it's so useful.)
Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) (If SP2 is out by the time you read this, use SP2. It includes many, many significant security enhancements as well as other tweaks and upgrades.)
I found all of these useful for learning about partitioning a hard drive. Later I'll walk you through what I did myself.
Radified Guide to FDISK: Create Hard Drive Partitions: http://fdisk.radified.com/
Radified Partitioning Strategies: http://partition.radified.com/
Planning Your Partitions: http://aumha.org/a/parts.htm
Again, here is a sampling of what my research turned up. I think it's a good starting point.
Radified Windows XP Installation Guide: http://windows.radified.com/
Virtual Memory in Windows XP: http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php
Coming soon.
We're finally ready to install (and thus dual-boot) Linux.