Install Drivers and Operating System

This step will depend heavily on what operating system you have chosen. Installing an operating system used to be quite an involved process, but modern operating system installation is more time-consuming than difficult. In most cases, it is a simple matter of following directions on screen.

Your operating system should come with an installation CD which you can boot from your CD drive. If the CD doesn't boot correctly, then either the CD is not bootable, your drive is not properly connected, or the CD driver is not loading. In a DOS-based operating system such as Windows, you usually must have the file mscdex.exe on your C: drive; the installation disk coming with your CD drive should take care of this for you. If your CD drive doesn't come with an installation disk and your operating system doesn't provide a bootable floppy system disk, you will have to obtain one somehow; contact whoever sold you the system, or find a disk on the internet which you can copy to floppy disk using another machine.

Insert the installation CD in the drive. If your CD (or DVD) drive is working correctly, the operating system's installation program should appear shortly after the POST (Power On Self Test) is completed. Usually, the first decision the operating system's installation program asks you to make concerns the hard drive configuration. This involves formatting and partitioning your hard drive which is covered in the previous article. The program will take some time to complete the formatting, and then will begin copying files. In certain operating systems, such as Linux RedHat, you are offered detailed choices on which applications to install with the operating system. Other operating systems such as Windows XP offer you very few configuration options and consequently are easier to install. In any case, simply answer the questions that appear onscreen during the operating system installation; your system will probably reboot one or more times before the installation is complete.

After your operating system is installed, remove the CD from the drive and reboot your computer. If all went well, the operating system should now load from the hard drive and it's time to make sure all your hardware is properly recognized by the operating system. With newer operating systems such as Windows XP, all hardware is usually automatically detected and drivers included with the operating system are installed. If your hardware is functioning correctly there is probably no reason to replace these drivers, but there are some exceptions. The most notable is the video card; you should always get the most recent video card drivers from the manufacturer's website; it should be a simple matter to download and install. The same goes for your audio card and for the motherboard itself; sometimes the drivers supplied on CD are not completely up-to-date.

If you are installing an operating system such as Linux, which is not nearly as widely supported as the Microsoft operating systems (although it has made tremendous headway), you may have issues with some of your hardware and unless you have purchased an enterprise version of the operating system you will be unable obtain support. There are numerous online resources to help you in this situation.

That's it! Your newly built computer system should now be ready to use.