Introduction
Windows installation is an important activity of system maintenance and upgrades, however one single mistake can create a lot of troubles and may result in data loss or even OS failure, hence it is important to ensure that the hardware configuration is according to the requirements and all the necessary components are available before installation/upgrade to newer windows versions. In this paper we will look at the basics of hardware requirements for any Windows upgrade and we will also learn about input/output. It must be ensured that the person who is performing the installation or Windows upgrade must have an admin access to the system.
Preparing for installation . . .
Before installing any version of Windows, it is important to understand the requirements of the particular operating system because in case if the configuration of the machine is not according to the requirements of that particular version then there might be problems like slow operating system or lack of compatibility. Let's discuss some common hardware, network and system requirements which may be sufficient to install any version of Windows from 2000 to Windows 7. The processes which are available on the market are usually 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processors and hence that is a major requirement, similarly we would need one GB of system memory and 16 GB available disk space. In order to enjoy the most common services provided by Windows the system should have a DVD drive, USB ports and appropriate cache memory. The next step that I will take will be to select the disk partition option, and shows the right file system e.g. FAT, FAT 32 and NTFS.
Installing Windows:
In case of Windows installation there are primarily three options which are available, which include boot from CD/DVD, setup boot disk or a downloaded setup. Once the setup is run the first option provided is to select the operating system and the type of installation, well we have three options to upgrade, repair or install parallel to the existing operating system. In case if a newer version of Windows is being installed on a system with an older version then the same happens automatically.
The moment, necessary instructions are provided to the installation wizard the setup will start copying necessary files and the installation panel will also show the expected time to complete the entire installation. Once the installation is done then in case of all windows versions other than Windows 7, would require drivers to be installed. The driver installation must be done using appropriate drivers which are required according to the hardware configuration of the system. Once the installation is complete, the system must be restarted in order to allow the changes to take effect and while the system gets restarted we also get to know whether there are any problems appearing due to the installation. There are a few common issues that may be faced during an installation, like problems in inserting the serial number, unavailability of drivers and disk partition issues and it is important to handle these by handling one task each at one time.
Common and Specialty Input/ Output devices . . .
There are basically three types of devices which are associated with the system and they are common, multimedia and specialty. The common Input devices are the keyboard and mouse which are found on almost every system, similarly there are few devices which are related to multimedia and then there are devices like touch screens and biometric capture which come under the category of the input specialty devices. There are few input devices like the internal modem which may be directly attached to the computer and that is the reason why it should be ensured that the installation of the devices is done in a proper manner.
Conclusion
Now that we have looked at all the basic requirements of windows installations and upgrade, it is important to understand here that these systems require a lot of preparations and planning. Hence in order to ensure a smooth process one should ensure that all the hardware and software components are arranged properly. The installation must start though boot media in case of an upgrade and after choosing the right installation type and root directory, we would require providing the serial and finishing installation by adding the device drivers. The I/O devices must be installed at the last and then there should be a system restart to check if all the systems components are running without any conflict and that will be the last step of the OS setup / upgrade process.
References
CISCO. (2009). Input / Output . Retrieved November 10, 2011, from sadena.com: http://www.sadena.com/Books-Texts/CompTIA%20A+%20Certification%20eBook/chap18.pdf
King, P. J. (n.d.). Input/Output Devices. Retrieved November 10, 2011, from macs.hw.ac.uk: http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~pjbk/pathways/cpp1/node12.html
Utah State University. (2011). Input & Output Devices. Retrieved November 10, 2011, from cil.usu.edu: http://cil.usu.edu/htm/cs/iodevices/
Yam, M. (2009, May 1). Windows 7 System Requirements Finalized. Retrieved November 10, 2011, from tomshardware.com: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-system-requirements-hardware-rc,7701.html
