To install Windows 7 first insert your installation disk into your computer while it is starting up. The computer must see the install disk when it starts so you might consider turning the machine on, wait for the first black screen to appear and press the pause key on your keyboard. This will stop the computer from progressing through its start up sequence and it will pause on whatever BIOS screen you paused it on. Open your optical drive and insert the Windows install disk and give the machine about 10 seconds to find out that its there. From this point you might prefer to press the space bar and allow the machine to continue however I usually press CTRL, ALT and DELETE to restart the computer entirely. If you are unfamiliar with this particular key combination hold down CTRL and ALT then press DELETE on your keyboard and the computer should restart and boot off the install disk. The computers BIOS must be set so that the order of devices it will attempt to boot up off has the CD/DVD drive before the hard disk drive.

If the computer boots successfully off the installation disk you may see a message Press Any Key to Boot off CD or possibly Press Enter to Boot off CD. If you see any of these messages then press the Enter key on your keyboard. The computer will then start running the installer program on the installation disk. You should see a progress bar and a mesage that Windows is loading files.

The PC may take a few minutes to load the files and present you with a screen that informs you that it is Starting Windows. It is not starting the Windows Desktop Environment however just the installer program.

You will then be presented with a screen with three drop down menus asking for the Language that you would like to install, what region is relevent for the display of dates, currency etc and what type of keyboard you use. Click your mouse on the upside down triangle to the right of these options to change them. Click next when you are finished.

The next screen has a few options on it including Repair Your Computer and What to Know before Installing Windows. Click on the Install Now button in the middle of this screen.

By clicking Install Now we have told the installer program that we are going to go ahead with a complete installation and it will start the program that will perform this task.