Insert the Windows XP Installation CD and restart your PC. Look for the prompt. When it appears, hit the ENTER key on your keyboard.

Finally, after about 3 minutes of waiting, depending on your drive speed, you will see the welcome screen.

Hit ENTER at this screen to set up Windows XP.

Depending on your XP edition, a licence agreement screen may appear. Hit the F8 key on your keyboard to accept if it does.

IF your system already has Windows XP in it, this screen may show. Hit ESC to continue installing XP.

Now we get to the formatting part. What we need to do here is to delete the C Drive if it exists.

This will erase all data in the C Drive so be sure before you proceed!

If there is only "unpartitioned space" listed, skip the next step.

A warning like this may appear when you attempt to delete the C partition. Go ahead and delete it.

And we get an unpartitioned space to install to! Select the drive and hit ENTER to install XP!

Choose to "Format the partition using the NTFS file system (Quick)" in the next screen that appears.

And the setup procedure starts copying files. All the remaining steps should be automatic now!

After a restart, we get a beautiful GUI to continue the installation of the operating system.

You may be prompted for your regional settings.

Hit the Details button and change your settings according to your country and preferences.

Hit Next to continue and enter your name and organization details.

Hit Next again to enter your Product Key.

You will be prompted for Computer Name and Administrator password. Click Next on this screen if you are unsure.

Date and Time. Correct it if necessary and click Next and Setup will continue.

After a while of installing network drivers, Setup will prompt you with this screen. Again, if you are unsure, leave it at Typical Settings and click Next.

Same goes for Workgroups in the next screen. Click Next if unsure.

Windows Setup starts to perform some configuration, building start menu items and registering components.

After you restart again, hit OK for a better display resolution and Yes.

Here's the welcome screen

Click Next.

Tick "Help protect my PC by turning on Automatic Updates now" and click Next.

You will be prompted for Windows Activation. If activation fails for some reason, simply call Microsoft directly when you are reminded again to activate.

Note that registration is entirely optional. Registration and Activation are two different things. Activation is mandatory while registration is not.

If you are the only user of the PC, simply enter your name for the first box. Enter any other users name if you have more users.

You can always create more users in Start > Control Panel > User Accounts.

Click Next and be done!