Now that you have prepared your system, it's time to perform the actual upgrade process.
Ironically enough, this step is actually much less involved than the procedures leading up to this point. Upgrading to Windows XP, like installing it, is a mostly automated process. There are a few things you need to know about beforehand though. Let's get started:

Dynamic updates

When upgrading a computer to Windows XP, the procedure supports what Microsoft calls 'dynamic updates.' This involves your computer acquiring necessary patches and drivers from the Internet during the install process, reducing the time and risk needed to patch up your new XP system after the upgrade is complete.

The dynamic update process takes advantage of the fact that your PC can be connected to the Internet when the install process is begun, since it already has a working version of Windows.

As you can imagine, using dynamic updates can drastically increase the amount of time necessary for the upgrade, but as it will save you an equivalent amount of time afterwards, this is not such a huge deal in our minds. Obviously, your PC needs to be connected to the Internet in order to use this feature, and the upgrade process will go on perfectly happily without it.

You will be asked whether or not you wish to use dynamic early in the upgrade process. There's not really a good reason not to, unless you are working on a PC in a business environment and need to have more control over which critical updates you install on Windows XP. For a list of the fixes and patches in the current version of the dynamic update file, check here.

Starting the installation

Place your Windows XP CD in your CD drive. If the CD automatically launches, select the 'install Windows XP' option, then choose to upgrade. If it does not, navigate to the CD in Windows explorer and double click 'setup.exe.'

Read the product license agreement carefully (if you want to know why you should do this, see our article on software legal issues here. Press F8 to continue, then enter the product key you were provided with your copy of XP.

You will be asked if you wish to convert your drive(s) to the NTFS file system. For the time being, say no unless you have a pressing reason to do this. The conversion can always be done later in XP, and converting your drive removes your ability to uninstall the XP upgrade.

You will be given the opportunity to use the dynamic update feature as discussed above. Remember that you must be connected to the Internet to use this feature, and a broadband connection is definitely recommended, otherwise you will spending a lot of time on this upgrade.

Enter a password for the 'administrator' account when prompted. Note that it is important that you assign a password, preferably a strong one, to this built-in user account. The administrator account, like the first user you will create, has full access to your computer. Not assigning this account a password is extremely unwise if you will be connecting to the Internet.