1. First things first: Gather all of your software discs (drivers, software including the Windows installation disc)

2. Double check that all your important data is BACKED UP!! (this should have really been done prior to any hard drive changes)

3. Reboot, and enter the BIOS . Go to the System Configuration page and set “SATA Native Support” to Disable. This is CRUCIAL!! (Your system may be worded a little different but whatever system you have disable SATA support.)

4. Boot the Windows XP CD, and enter Windows setup.

5. Hit Enter (continue). press F8 to agree with the legal stuff. Hit ESC (don’t repair).

6. If you used Gparted to partition the hard drive located the portion you formatted for Windows.

7. Select the “Unpartitioned space” and hit “C” to create.

8. The size will be whatever you want, if you have this formatted as FAT 32 or NTFS already some of this may be done for you.

8. Select desired partition and hit Enter.

9. Format NTFS. A full format is recommended if it’s your first time formatting this drive. (I always do a full format)

10. Windows will copy files to the HD after format.

11. Reboot (it will auto reboot). XP install continues, this time in a slightly more graphical interface. Answer all questions it asks .

12. Windows will reboot again.

13. Go through the brief setup process.. then Windows will log you in.

Mozilla Firefox

In FireFox:

Click the ‘Edit‘ menu and select ‘Preferences’.

Select the ‘Content‘ tab at the top, and under “Fonts & Colors”, click ‘Advanced...’

Set the following fonts:

Proportional: Serif Size: 16

Serif: Georgia

Sans-serif: Verdana

Monospace: Bitstream Vera Sans Mono Size: 14

Click ‘OK‘

On high resolution monitors, web page text in Firefox may seem a bit small. An excellent add-on is the No Squint plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2592. I like to have my text set at 110%, but your preferences may vary. Some sites don’t scale as well as others with the enlarged text, but you can always use CTRL and + or – to make the text larger or smaller for those sites.

Mozilla Thunderbird

In ThunderBird:

Click the ‘Edit‘ menu and select ‘Preferences‘.

Select the ‘Display‘ tab at the top, and under “Fonts & Encodings”, click ‘Fonts…’

Set the following fonts:

Proportional: Serif Size: 16

Serif: Georgia

Sans-serif: Verdana

Monospace: Lucida Sans typewriter Size: 14

Additional software to enhance your Ubuntu experience can be added throught the Synaptic Package Manager (System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager)

• cups-pdf (allows you to print directly to a PDF file)

• kdepim-suite (information management applications, contains many helpful tools)

• koffice (office suite, including Kthesaurus and Krita graphics software)

• kaffeine-mozilla (plugin for streaming audio & video formats when using Firefox)

• lame (for creating MP3 audio—required for MP3 export in Audacity and other software)

• libdvdcss2 (required for DVD playback. NOTE: only download this if you already have a legal license for DVD playback software (such as playback software that was shipped with your DVD-ROM drive). Otherwise, it is not legal and you should purchase LinDVD or another commercial DVD playback software for Linux if you wish to play DVDs on your system.)

• openoffice.org-galleries (additional clip art and graphics files for OpenOffice.org)

• RealPlayer (Real media player)

• RealPlayer-rpnp (plugin for Firefox)

• webcore-fonts (standard web fonts such as Arial, Times New Roman, etc.)

• win32-codecs (contains Win32 essential codec binaries required for the decompression of video formats that have no or limited open source alternatives (eg. some Quicktime, RealPlayer or Windows media codecs)

• wine (allows you to install and run many (but not all) Windows programs)

Optional Cool Software

• audacity (audio editing software that can export as WAV, MP3 or OGG)

• audacity-manual (user manual)

• bluefish (web page editor—many features for advanced users)

• cmake, gcc-c++, kdebase-devel, libgtk+1.2-devel, libgtk+2.0_0-devel (these libraries are needed for compiling some software, which is necessary for a lot of software that is not available in the PSLinuxOS repository)

• fonts-ttf-freefont (additional fonts)

• gtk-qt-engine (recommended if you want to make your KDE and GTK apps have a similar look-and-feel)

• inkscape (vector graphics designer, similar to Adobe Illustrator)

• kde-kickercolors (additional KDE panel skins)

• additional KDE visual styles and window decorations: I find the following to be quite good:

  • kdemoreartwork-ia_ora (Ia Ora KDE visual style)

  • kdemoreartwork-knifty (Knifty KDE visual style)

  • kdemoreartwork-polyester (Polyester KDE visual style)

  • kdemoreartwork-powder (Powder KDE visual style)

• kdeutils-kfloppy (tool for formatting floppy disks—not necessary if you don’t intend to use floppy disks)

• keytouch (for configuring the extra (multimedia) keys on your keyboard)

• kino (video editing software)

• kompozer (WYSIWYG web page editor, similar to Microsoft FrontPage, for those who want to design a web page, but don’t know how to code in HTML)

• kpowersave (battery monitoring and suspend/standby triggers for laptops)

• scribus (desktop publishing software, like Microsoft Publisher)

• shorewall (firewall—do not install if you intend on using DansGuardian parental controls)

You can install the MS core fonts by installing the msttcorefonts package. To do this, use the following command from the command line in the terminal Applications>Accessories>Terminal:

$sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

This will give you the core fonts, but if there are other TrueType fonts that you want installed, it is as easy as copying the font files to the ~/.fonts/ directory ( Places>Home folder>.fonts,) to see hidden files when you open the home folder, click view and show hidden files in the toolbar.

After installing new fonts, you will have to log out and log in again to be able to see and use the new fonts.

If you are unable to download the package log in as root ( this is something you don’t want to do often)

Open a terminal  and enter:

su [enter] 

password [your password, then enter]

If you don’t know the password go into system/administration/users and groups

highlight root and click on properties

you will see a portion where you can change the password to one you know then click ok.

retry to login to your terminal as root