How to install Windows 7 Professional operating system in your home desktop or laptop
Are you looking for installation guide of Windows 7 Professional operating system. Windows 7 is an operating system created by Microsoft to be installed on computers and laptops. In this article, I have given detailed steps about how to install Windows 7 in your home PC. Read this article to know the details about installation guide of Windows 7 Professional operating system.
Introduction
There are a few mandatory things to be considered before installing Windows 7 professional:
• System Requirements
• Compatibility of software and hardware in your machine
• Options to partition hard disk in your PC
• Checklist containing pre-installation requisites
Below are the minimum recommended system requirements for installation of Windows 7 Professional operating system in a computer:
• Processor: 1GHz (32-bit) or (64-bit)
• Memory: 1GB
• Disk space: 20GB
• It must support DirectX 9 graphics with 128MB memory for enabling Aero theme.
• DVD-R/W CD Drive
• Internet access for Windows activation and Windows update.
Below are the detailed steps with screenshots about the installation of Windows 7 Professional in your PC.
To start installing the Windows 7 professional, you need to boot the system with the Windows 7 Professional DVD. Once you boot PC from DVD, follow each step mentioned below carefully.
Step 1
Look for an option "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD.." See the below screenshot for better understanding.
Be sure to hit the any key to allow your machine to boot from Windows 7 professional DVD. Also note that, if fail press a key immediately after seeing the above message, your computer will try to boot from the next device, which is present in the boot order system, which could be hard drive.
But, If you get a message saying "No Operating System Found" or "NTLDR is Missing" instead of above screen, the reason could be PC has not been booted from CD/DVD drive. To fix this issue, you can change the boot order in BIOS program of your PC to list the CD/DVD drive first.
Instead of the screen shown above, if Windows 7 Professional setup process starts automatically, then you can move on with the next step.
Step 2
Windows setup would begin loading files into your machine. See the below screenshot.
Step 3
When the files for the installation of Windows 7 Professional have been loaded into the memory of your PC, you can see there is a splash screen showing that, the setup process will begin now. See the below screenshot.
Step 4
Wait for a few minutes to see the installation menu on the screen. Once the menu appears, you can choose the Keyboard language from the drop down. See the below screenshot.
Step 5
The next screen shows that, the installation wizard has begun. You would find an option called "Install now". Once you click on it, it will take you to advance installation options. In case if you want to repair a corrupt OS, which is previously installed in the system, you can click on "Repair your computer" button situated at the left side of the screen. However, for first time installation, click on "Install now". See screenshot below.
Step 6
When you click on "Install now" option, you will get the below screen indicating that, Win 7 Professional setup process is in progress. Do not touch any buttons and do nothing at this stage. See the below screenshot.
Step 7
The next screen pops up is a textbox, which contains Windows 7 Professional Software License.
Read the agreement carefully and understand it, then check the box "I accept the license terms" below agreement document and click on "Next" to confirm that, you have agreed with the terms.
Note: Be sure to read the license agreement during the operating system and other software installations. Because, there would be a few legally binding limits on the no. of computers in which the software or OS could be installed and there would be a few other limitations listed for your reference. See the below screenshot.
Step 8
The next screen coming up will give you two options, Upgrade and Custom (advanced). Upgrade option is used to upgrade the operating system from an older version of Windows to Windows 7. Be advised that, Vista can now be upgraded to Windows 7. However, Windows XP still is a challenge. However, in this case, you can choose Custom option to install the Windows 7 on your PC. See the below screenshot.
Step 9
In this step, you can choose the physical location, where you want to install the Windows 7 Professional in your system hard disk.
You can choose an unallocated space or priorly partitioned space on hard drive to install the Windows 7 Professional. If you have to install Windows 7 Professional on the new hard drive in your computer, then the screen would appear like the one below mentioning the size of your HDD.
Note: The No. of partitions showing on the page be it unallocated portions, priorly partitioned or formatted space or the blank partitions depend on your system. Also, first time installation will not require a manual partition format of the drive as Windows 7 Professional does it automatically. See the below screenshot.
Step 10
The Windows 7 professional setup process will now start copying the files from the installation DVD to hard disk. See below screenshot.
Step 11
This step will take a lot of time to complete. It depends on the computer speed, it may take from 5-30 minutes. Once the setup process is completed, you can restart your computer.
This is the most time consuming step out of the 29 steps. Depending on the speed of your computer, this process could take time of 5 to 30 minutes. If you do not touch it, it will automatically start restarting after 10 seconds. See the below screenshot.
Step 12
Do not perform anything as Windows 7 Professional installation is in progress. See the below screenshot.
Step 13
In this step, Windows 7 professional Setup would update registry settings and prepare for the final stages of installation. See the below screenshot.
Step 14
Wait during this step while the Setup is starting different services , which are necessary for your computer. See the below screenshot.
Step 15
Once all the files are loaded and every service is properly installed, a new page comes up asking you to create user ID and password for admin account. You can give the user name and password. See the below screenshot.
Step 16
The next step follows the same procedure, where you will have to give the password twice and also, you get an option to remember password on the system to create an admin account it will not prompt for credentials as far as you don't create an additional account on it. You can choose a complex password to make sure it does not get broken. See the below screenshot.
Step 17
In this step, you will have to activate Windows 7 Professional by typing the product key, that you received with your DVD. See below screenshot.
Step 18
In this step, you will get an option to configure the updates. You can choose your desired settings from the options, which are given in the screenshot. However, choosing "Ask me later" is recommended. See the screenshot.
Step 19
Select the Time Zone and location and hit "Next". See the screenshot.
Step 20
Also note that, the location you choose determines the firewall settings for the recently installed Win 7 Professional. You would get 3 options, home network, work network and public network. You can choose home and work networks as they are the trusted ones, while adding other computers to the group for data sharing without any issues. However, public network is not trusted. Hence, use it if you are running an internet café. See the screenshot.
Step 21
This will finish the Windows 7 Professional installation process and ready to be used. You will see the new look of your screen, after you install Win 7 Professional in your machine. See the below screenshot.
Conclusion
Windows 7 Professional installation in a PC is an easy process, if you follow the provided steps in sequence, when compared to XP or Vista installations. It hardly takes an hour for completion. However, once it is done, you will have a long post installation Setup to be followed like installing desired softwares etc., depending on your requirement.
Read My first experience with Windows 10 Technical Preview
Install Windows 7 Professional on your Dell PC.
Starting the Setup.
Setting up the New Hard Drive for the Install.
Copy System Files to the Hard Drive.
Configuring the Setup.
Starting Windows for the first time.
Regards,
Peter