How does one install an OS?

I'm planning to buy a sager from xoticpc, and i'm wondering whether I should buy a preinstalled OS or install my own OS.

I'm relatively uninformed about drivers, software, installing OS, BIOS, etc. If i could get a point in the right direction that would be nice.

 

Personely i would get a disc and do my own install.This way the os isnt on a small partion on your laptop and if you decide to sell your laptop you can keep the os.Also you dont have a lot of bloat ware on your machine.
It's not that hard to install windows on anything.Just make sure to get the windows os that your laptop is designed for....good luck.

 

If your OS will be Vista it'll be able to find most drivers by itself, maybe even have quite a few. Some manufacturers will give yu a driver disc - but more and more don't.
If you buy the laptop without an OS you may want to inquireabout it, but NBR will help you find any drivers you need if you give us the specs.

Insalling the OS itself, at least on ME, XP and Vista is just clicking a couple of buttons - i.e. easy. I installed XP without ever having done it before and was fine, you should be too.

Not quite - if he buys an OEM disc the OS will be locked to the hardware.
Only if he buys a full version won't it be.

On another note - I may be wrong about this, but I thinkit is cheaper to get an OS from a manufacturer than buying it by yourself.

 

If you choose to buy the notebook with no OS, XoticPC will just include the drivers and utilities disc, which should work for both XP and Vista.

 

Seconded.

If you get a pre-installed OS though, then the best way to go about installing a fresh OS on your own would be to first go into Device Manager and check out all of the drivers names/numbers, write them down and track/download them from the Internet for the OS you wish to install BEFORE you format the system.

I think the laptop's website should contain drivers for the OS's ... but in case it doesn't for older OS's such as XP, then go to the driver's manufacturer's websites and download the drivers for the OS you want to install.

 

There is one thing to be aware of, if the hard drive is a SATA one. With Vista, the installer can usually proceed with the SATA drive it finds by itself. If it can't, you have the option of pointing the Vista installer to a floppy, CD, DVD or even a USB stick with the proper drives on it. The WinXP installer, however, is NOT so forgiving. It demands that the driver be on a floppy and will not allow you to use any other source. That's fine if your machine has a floppy drive on it, but 99.99% no longer do. So, the ONLY way to install XP on a SATA drive is to slipstream the drivers into an installer disk. (There are many threads here with the specifics of how to accomplish that.)

Gary

 

You could just plug in a USB floppy drive, or not?

At least I know that my XP CD detected a USB HDD when my internal HDD broke...

 

For most machines, yes you can just plug in a USB floppy. But USB floppys are becoming more and more rare as well. As long as the USB support is in the bios this will work. And for 99.99999999% of todays machines it is. My Sony FZ even has firewire support in the BIOS.

Gary

 

OK and USB floppy drivers are expensive - 40€ piece... - even though internal ones for desktop PCs cost less than half that.. I have a USB flopy drive.

 

Sometimes, bios allows you to use flashdrive instead of floppy. There's a setting called " emulate flashdrive as floppy setting" under the the bios. If you select that, flashdrives will appear as floppy and you can install RAID/SATA drivers from there.

Also you can slipstream your RAID/SATA drivers onto windows XP disk through nlite or just slipstream SP3. I think it support SATA drives out of the box.

 

I've not come across a bios with that feature yet. That's REALLY cool.

Gary

 

? So i'm going to have troubles if I try to install an XP?

 

Trouble? No not if you have a floppy drive, a BIOS that will allow a USB Thumb drive to emulate a floppy drive or the wherewithall to use nlite to slipstream the SATA drivers into an installer disc. (All this ASSUMES that you have a SATA hard drive. If not none of this is needed.)

Gary

 

Ya but will it work on any other laptop,dell for instance,if not that's why i would buy my own disk.....!!!!