Note especially that partitioning the hard disk may have to be done before installing NT.
NT is installed from three floppy disks and a CD-ROM. You need all of these. If you don't have them, you may be able to borrow them from one of these people:
| Who | Room | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Support Team | 2421 | support | 505112 |
| Chris Cooke | 2418 | cc | 505203 |
| Alastair Scobie | 2408 | ajs | 505178 |
| Archie Howitt | 1508 | arch | 505179 |
After a few seconds you will be asked to eject floppy 1 and insert floppy 2.
When prompted, you can press F1 to learn a little more about the install program. Whether you do this or not, you can then press ENTER (the Return key will do) to carry on with the installation.
Press ENTER to have your hard disk(s) automatically detected.
Switch to floppy 3 when prompted.
If you have device drivers which came with your PC hardware components, you now have a chance to install them if you wish (press "S"). Follow the instructions given. However, the chances are that you will not need to do this for the basic hardware such as hard disks, memory, and ethernet adapter. In any event, device drivers can be installed after the install process is finished. Drivers for your video adapter can also be installed afterwards, since NT can function adequately on the "lowest common denominator" VGA setting which all video adapters should support.
When finished, press ENTER again.
When the Microsoft licence agreement is displayed, press Page Down until you get to the very bottom of the document, and then press F8 to agree to it.
If NT is already present on your disk, the install process now asks you if you would like to upgrade your current installation (press ENTER to choose this), or overwrite it with a new installation (press "N" to choose this). If installing on a disk without NT installed, a fresh installation is of course assumed. Here we assume a new installation.
The install program now displays a list of hardware & software components for you to check. You may have to change the type of keyboard from "US" to "United Kingdom". Do this by pressing Up and Down until the keyboard type is highlighted, then pressing Return. Move up the list of keyboard types until "United Kingdom" is chosen, then press Return again.
When the list of components is correct, press Return to accept it.
The simplest partition scheme would be to create one partition, occupying the whole of the hard disk, and to install NT in that partition. If the PC will never run anything other than NT, this is a reasonable choice.
However, if you now, or may in the future, want to run another operating system from time to time - for example Linux, MS-DOS, Windows 95 - it is advisable to create more than one disk partition. Below is a suggested way to partition a disk which is at least 3Gb in size. This partition scheme is designed to make it easier to insert the PC into a more closely integrated departmental NT arrangement, should one be established.
If you want to run a non-Microsoft operating system like Linux, you should not partition the disk using only the NT install program! This is because the NT installation program does not partition the hard disk in a way recognisable to non-Microsoft programs - that is, it does not create "real" partitions. Instead, it actually creates just one "real" partition covering the whole disk, and sub-divides that into "logical" partitions. These "logical" partitions are only recognised by Microsoft operating systems like NT, Windows 95 and MS-DOS. Instead, you should use some other partitioning program. For instance, a good strategy would be to boot with an MS-DOS floppy and partition the hard disk with the MS-DOS program fdisk. Then you can safely install NT first, and later go on to install other OSes, for example Linux.
Once your chosen partitioning scheme is entered, go onto the next screen. This screen lets you choose the type of filesystem to be used for your main NT partition. The choice is FAT or NTFS; FAT is compatible with older PC software but NTFS offers more in the way of file security. NTFS is the recommended choice. (Note that even if you choose NTFS, the install program will actually create a FAT filesystem here; the conversion to NTFS will happen later on in the install procedure.)
When prompted, choose to format the NT partition for a clean installation.
The install program will suggest that NT is installed in the \WINNT directory on your chosen disk partition. This is reasonable.
The install program will next suggest an exhaustive examination of the disk. This too is a good idea, and should be permitted.
Don't worry if at this stage your monitor flashes unpleasantly and has a low resolution: this happens when the monitor is being driven using the "lowest common denominator" VGA graphics software, which works with most graphics adapters and monitors. When the install process is finished, you will have an opportunity to switch to a more suitable graphics device driver, and your monitor can then be made to display NT more pleasingly.
The install process will now want to copy more NT files from the CD. You will be prompted for a location on the CD. If you used the suggested disk partition scheme given earlier, the default suggestion of E:\i386 will be correct. If you instead only created one NTFS or FAT partition in total, the CD-ROM drive will be disk D: rather than E:.
Once the files have been copied, the "NT Setup Wizard" will help you to complete the remainder of the installation, which consists of choosing optional components, and configuring the networking software.
The Setup Wizard offers you a choice of several ways of proceeding. It's assumed here that you choose a "Custom" installation.
You will be asked to enter your name and organization. A convention often used in the department is to enter your name as "Computer Science" and your organization as "Edinburgh University".
When choosing an administrator password, the normal rules of password-picking apply - try to think of a password which isn't a recognisable word or name in any common language, and try to mix cases and include numbers and punctuation. The install program recommends that you write down your administrator password and keep it somewhere safe - but we recommend that you do NOT write down the administrator password unless you really think that you won't remember it any other way. The "administrator" account is the equivalent of the Unix "root" account, and has full privileges to do anything in NT, so the password should not be given out or written down if you can avoid doing so.
If you have a spare floppy, opt to make an emergency repair disk. This may come in handy later on (if NT won't boot from the hard disk for some reason, having the emergency repair floppy will help retrieve the situation).
You will next be prompted to choose optional software. Note that you can see categories of software in more detail by highlighting a category from the list and clicking "Details". Note also that not all programs in each category are chosen for you by default; a lot of optional software will not be installed unless you actually choose it.
If you want to be able to connect to the department's ethernet network, and from there to the internet, the following choices are appropriate:
"This computer will participate on a network"
"Wired to the network".
When prompted for the type of your network adapter, choose the correct type from the list (it may already be chosen for you).
Choose "TCP/IP" from the list of network protocols.
You will next be asked to choose from a list of Network Services. You can do without any of them, but you might want these:
Simple TCP/IP Services: ping, rsh, etc.
Microsoft TCP/IP Printing: versions of the Unix printing commands lpr and lpq, but semi-functional and awkward to use. This is only necessary if you need to print from NT's command line interface.
When asked if you want to use DHCP, say no. DHCP is not used in the department.
The program which pops up and prompts you for your machine's TCP/IP settings is also available after installation is finished, so if you don't want to do that now, skip it and do it later.
To find the program later: login; open "My Computer" (on the desktop); and look for the "Control Panel" folder. Control Panel (illustration) contains a number of programs (these are sometimes referred to as "applets" in Microsoft-speak) which can be used to alter various NT configuration settings. Double-click "Network"; click the "Protocols" tab (illustration); and double-click "TCP/IP Protocol". You can then proceed as per the instuctions below.
When entering the TCP/IP configuration values, remember that there are four separate sheets to configure, not just one. You should NOT click "OK" until you have finished configuring all four. If you do, the window will disappear completely, and (if you are still in the install program) cannot be brought back during the install process. If this happens to you, just finish the rest of the intall process and go back to the TCP/IP program later, as described above.
"IP Address" tab (illustration):
If you have more than one ethernet card, you can enter separate sets of values for each card by selecting the adapters here. If not, ignore "Adapter".
Select "specify an IP address". The detailed settings you will need are given in table 1 below.
It shouldn't be necessary to specify any "Advanced" settings.
Remember, don't click "OK" at this point!
"DNS" tab (illustration):
The Domain Name Service resolves internet names (e.g. cauvery.dcs.ed.ac.uk) into internet (IP) addresses (e.g. 129.215.96.47) which are used to navigate your communications from one section of network to another.
The "host name" you enter here should simply be the name which you arranged earlier, in lower case - for instance, cauvery.
Other DNS settings are given in table 2, above.
"WINS Address" tab (illustration):
The only important setting here is to make sure that "Enable DNS for Windows Resolution" is on.
"Routing" tab:
This can be ignored.
This completes the TCP/IP configuration.
When the computer reboots, you will be ready to login for the first time. You can login as "administrator" (note: don't try to login using the suggested username "Administrator" - it doesn't work! The "admnistrator" username should be all lower case) with the password you chose earlier in the installation process.
The main installation process is now finished. However, a number of things remain to be done before you can productively use your NT workstation. As with any freshly-installed operating system, some of the default system settings are silly or wrong, and a lot of personalisation is required.
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