Before you actually go for installing any operating system such as Windows Vista or any other, it would be a great idea to have a look around to search for all of the new drivers for the hardware which is a part of your system. There are many drivers that you would need such as the soundcard, graphics card, raid if you use it, and the motherboard drivers are considered to be the main ones which you might need.
Check for hardware in Control panel
There are certain steps which you need to follow when you want to format the hard drive. First of all have a look at the control panel of your system and see for the hardware devices which are currently installed on your system if you do not know this already. The tools such as Sisoft Sandra can also be downloaded that can give you all details about the analysis of your system for this purpose. Many of the drivers which you would need can be found on the web site of your motherboard. ATI and Nvidia are the main vendors of the graphics cards and one should be checking their web sites to know about the latest drivers for graphics. Also make sure that your system is ready for Windows Vista operating system. Before you actually go for formatting your hard drive you should first back up all of the important files and documents. This would save you from any sort of trouble because when you go for formatting your hard drive then all of the files as well as the settings would be erased. Mozilla tool can be used for saving the settings of the browser.
You can also have two hard drives in your system and keep one for the operating system and the one for saving your files and data. The future OS upgrades or re-installs would be easier with the help of this. If you do not have two hard drives then you can always make two partitions. One partition should be at least 50GB for Os and the other can be for the files and data. During the installation of Windows the partitions can be selected.
Windows Vista CD
The CD of Windows Vista is also very important and you should have it when you need to start the installation. Once you have all the necessary things such as back up disks, Windows CD, software and drivers etc then you should find that which OS is installed on your system. Windows Vista makes use of NTFS formatting process.
Change boot order
In order to start this process, put in the CD of Windows Vista and restart the computer. Change the boot sequence and make CD Rom drive the first boot device. Press F2 to enter the boot menu and then change the boot sequence from there.
After this save the BIOS and restart your computer again. You should also look for the option to boot from the CD drive. Usually by pressing the space bar you can start from the CD drive. After this the windows installation instructs for each step and you can easily proceed with the installation.
