About Windows

Windows is one of the most used operating systems in the world right now, with about 80% of the desktop market share according to a source. It has a wide range of applications, from personal lifestyle to professional applications in the industry, it has all covered. In fact Microsoft office package is one of the most used professional application suite for academia and prefessional workspaces. It supports a huge variety of software and is the go to starting point of personal computing.

Official site: https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/windows

It's user interface is adorable and it's relatively an easy to use operating system.

Versions

Windows has two major versions to choose from, home and pro. You can think of them as home for personal use and pro for business use. That being said, pro has more tools for business management and enterprise resource planning. A complete comparison can be found on their website.

Let's get started with installing it...

Installing Windows

There are various ways of installing windows, one of the most common ways is through a bootable drive, think of it as a program on a drive that can install an operating system. Just that the installation procedure is a little different compared to an ordinary app, as we will soon see.

Pre Requirements

Before we get started, we need the following

1. A PC with the following minimum hardware specifications. Make sure that the system you're about to install to meets the minimum hardware specifications.
   • A 1 GHz or faster processor. I'd suggest at least a dual core processor, though it will also run on a single core. Use a 64 bit processor since it can run everything which a 32 bit can run and more.
   • RAM of 1 GB (for a 32-bit processor) or 2 GB (for a 64-bit processor). I'd suggest at least 4 GB ram, windows uses a lot of RAM, so it's good to have 4 GB for very beginner level work. If you want to use your system for more than just beginner level work, like for installing heavy applications, you're suggested to have 8 GB or more.
   • At least 20 GB hard disk space is required to install and run the OS. But you of course need way more than that to run applications and store files. I'd suggest about 300 GB of space for long term usage and about 100 GB for short term or beginner level usage.
     • The more you think you'll use windows for, the more memory (RAM) and disk space (storage) will you need, so choose accordingly. Choosing a more customizable workstation or laptop is a very good idea for this, at least see if you can upgrade RAM and storage.
2. A bootable windows 10 drive. Basically, a USB drive from which you'll be able to install Windows. There are multiple ways in which you can get this done, a few of them are given below and later in this page
   • You could buy a USB stick preconfigured directly from a retailer like Amazon.
   • If you already have a system running Windows (Virtual Machine or a friend's PC would also do), then Windows 10 installation media tool is the best option for you. Check Additional > Download and create a bootable USB stick
   • You could directly download the Windows 10 ISO file from the Microsoft website. This is basically like a ZIP file, which you then extract into a USB stick using a special extraction tool. It is the most common way of installing an operating system. You can find out the step by step instructions in the Additional > Creating a windows 10 bootable drive section later on this very page. You will need a pendrive with at least 8 GB storage capacity for this.

Procedure

The procedure to install windows on a system is as follows

1. Power off (shut down) the system if it's currently running.
2. Insert the bootable USB stick into a USB port. It's also recommended that you connect the machine to the internet using Ethernet.
3. Power on the machine
4. When booting, enter into boot setup configuration mode. In most of the PCs it's either DEL (delete) key or F9 or F12 key. It comes during boot (check the black screen with some text written on it while booting)
5. Select the USB stick from the menu where you'll be prompted to select the disk to boot.
6. You'll see windows logo, now follow the instructions which are shown on the screen.
7. You may be later, in the process, asked to connect to the internet and use your microsoft account to use your PC.

Additional

Download and create a bootable USB stick

Using Windows 10 installation tool

This tool can be used if you already have Windows installed and want to create a bootable USB. You also don't need to download the ISO file, since the tool will do it for you. Here's what you need to do:

• On a PC running Windows, go to this website
• Download the tool (don't run it yet)
• Plug in the USB drive (minimum 8 GB)
• Run the tool
• Select the USB drive when asked
• Keep pressing next and wait for the download to complete

Creating a Windows 10 bootable drive

The first thing you'll require is a windows 10 ISO image.

1. Download the Windows 10 ISO from from the official Microsoft website.
   • Click this link
   • Select edition and then click confirm
   • Select the product language and then click confirm
   • Choose the architecture, 32 bit or 64 bit and click the Download button. The download will begin shortly (it's about 5 GB). Wait fot it to finish.

Depending upon the operating system you're using to prepare this bootable USB, follow the instructions below:

For Linux

1. Download the UNetbootin tool
2. Open the UNetbootin tool and select the ISO by selecting the diskimage option and then the downloaded windows 10 ISO file
3. Select the USB drive in the drive selection
4. Click OK and wait for the process to complete

For Windows or macOS

Let's see how to create a Windows 10 bootable drive ourselves. If you're running Windows or macOS, continue reading this, else check out Additional > Creating a Windows 10 bootable drive > For Linux section. Follow the steps below

1. Get an empty pen drive to write the ISO onto.
   • Plug in the usb drive into a system that is already running an operating system (preferably Windows 7 or above but macOS might work as well. I'd not prefer a linux distribution for this).
   • To format the drive, Insert the drive into a USB port and then follow the instructions below (based on the OS that you're currently using)
     • For macOS: Open Disk Utility and select the external drive that you want to format. Click on Erase option. Select MS-DOS (FAT) as the format and choose any name.
     • For Windows: Open Windows File Explorer and navigate to This PC. Right click on the drive and select the option labelled Format... Give it a new name (label) and select the partitioning scheme as exFAT with 128 kilobytes of allocation unit size. Click Start button
2. Burn the ISO file onto the drive. You'll need to unpack the ISO file into the USB drive. There's special software to do this.
   • Follow the steps below (based on the OS that you're currently using)
     • For Windows: Download a windows ISO installation tool, I'd suggest rufus. Run rufus as administrator. Select the USB drive as Device.
       • On the next line, select the ISO image by clicking on SELECT button and boot selection must be Disk or ISO Image. Select the ISO image in the Open selection window.
       • Click on START to start the process. It takes about 20 to 30 minutes.
     • For macOS: Open Boot Camp Assistant. Click Continue if the startup page appears.
       • Uncheck Install Windows 10 or later version option in the next menu.
       • Check the Create a Windows 10 or later install disk option and click next
       • Choose the path to the ISO and the disk on the next page and click continue. It might generate a warning telling that the content in the disk will be erased, click continue there as well.