Windows Setup is an

installer Installation (or setup) of a computer program (including device drivers and plugins), is the act of making the program ready for execution. Installation refers to the particular configuration of software or hardware with a view to making it usabl ...

that prepares a computer for a

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

installation by allowing the user to pick installation settings (modifying partitions if necessary) and copying the files to the drive. The early versions of Windows required an existing compatible version of

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

operating system in order to be installed. The

Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...

family, from 3.1 through

5.0 ''5.0'' is the sixth studio album by American rapper Nelly. It was released through Universal Motown Records (Universal Music Group) and Derrty (Universal Music Group) on November 12, 2010.

featured text-based installation that prompted users to a GUI wizard in the final steps. The 9x family installer was similar to NT despite it being

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

-based. Additionally, it did not need preinstalled DOS as a requirement. With the release of Windows NT 6.0 (which

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

and

Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008, codenamed "Longhorn Server" (alternatives: "Windows Vista Server" or "Windows Server Vista"), is the seventh major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft to be released under the Windows Server b ...

are based on), Microsoft introduced a fully graphical setup environment and

UEFI Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI, as an acronym) is a Specification (technical standard), specification for the firmware Software architecture, architecture of a computing platform. When a computer booting, is powered on, the UEFI ...

support (partial in Windows Vista and 7, full UEFI support on Windows 8 onwards). The new graphical setup environment is based on

Windows Preinstallation Environment Windows Preinstallation Environment (also known as Windows PE and WinPE) is a lightweight version of Windows used for the deployment of PCs, workstations, and servers, or troubleshooting an operating system while it is offline. It is intended t ...

Windows 1.x and Windows 2.x

The installation of Windows 1.0, Windows 2.0, Windows 2.1 requires that a compatible version of

is installed. The user must specify any hardware such as mice or printers during installation. After the installation, Windows was to be started either manually by typing " WIN.COM" at the

command prompt A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user-friendly alternativ ...

, or configured for automatic startup by adding WIN.COM to the end of

AUTOEXEC.BAT AUTOEXEC.BAT is a system file that was originally on DOS-type operating systems. It is a plain-text batch file in the root directory of the boot device. The name of the file is an abbreviation of "automatic execution", which describes its func ...

Windows 3.x

The installation of

Windows 3.0 Windows 3.0 is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, launched on May 22, 1990. It introduces a new graphical user interface (GUI) that represents applications as clickable icons, instead of the list of file names in its predecessors. ...

Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series run as a shell on top of MS-DOS; it was the last Windows 1 ...

and Windows 3.2 requires that a compatible DOS operating system is already installed. The installer attempts to detect network cards, mice, and other hardware on its own but will rely on the user to specify hardware if it cannot find them. After the installation, Windows was to be started either manually by typing "WIN.COM" at the command prompt, or configured for automatic startup by adding WIN.COM to the end of AUTOEXEC.BAT.

Windows 9x

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...

, 98, and Me utilize a similar setup process, which does not require MS-DOS to be already installed. The setup application can be launched from a DOS environment (typically a DOS

boot disk A boot disk is a removable digital data storage medium from which a computer can load and run ( boot) an operating system or utility program. The computer must have a built-in program which will load and execute a program from a boot disk meeting ...

, also containing utilities such as

fdisk fdisk is a command-line utility for disk partitioning. It has been part of DOS, DR FlexOS, IBM OS/2, and early versions of Microsoft Windows, as well as certain ports of FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly BSD and macOS for compatibilit ...

to conduct

disk partitioning Disk partitioning or disk slicing is the creation of one or more regions on secondary storage, so that each region can be managed separately. These regions are called partitions. It is typically the first step of preparing a newly installed disk ...

), or from an existing Windows installation for in-place upgrades. If launched from DOS, a stub application first bootstraps a minimal environment based upon Windows 3.1, which is then used to launch a graphical wizard to begin the first phase of the installation process. In any case, after initial configuration and the copying of files to the selected installation folder, the computer then reboots into the installed OS to conduct the second phase, including hardware detection, driver installation, and post-install housekeeping before installation is complete.

Windows NT

Before Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008

The setup process introduced with

Windows NT 3.1 Windows NT 3.1 is the first major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, released on July 27, 1993. It marked the company's entry into the corporate computing environment, designed to support large networks and to be ...

remained in effect until the release of

. The general process is: # The user starts the installation process, either by booting off the installation media, running the MS-DOS installer from MS-DOS, or running the Windows installer from an existing Windows install. #** The MS-DOS installer (WINNT.EXE) is used to bootstrap the first stage of installation by generating a series of three boot disks, which are used to launch the installer if the system does not support booting from the CD. A command line switch can also be used to copy the installation files to the hard drive and boot the installer from it directly. #** The Windows installer presents an agreement and asks for the product key right at the beginning to upgrade Windows, then it copies files to the hard disk, and reboot to the setup from the hard disk in order to continue to the next step. # If the installation process started from booting off the media, or from the Windows installer, the boot loader loads the kernel, various hardware and file-system drivers. #** If any third-party drivers are needed in order to detect an SCSI or RAID system, setup pauses and requests the supply of a driver on a floppy disk. See F6 disk. # If the installation process started from booting off the media, the user is then presented with a text-based interface which gives three options 1) install Windows, 2) repair an existing installation, or 3) quit setup. # If the user decides to install Windows, they are presented with an agreement that must be accepted for Setup to continue. Prior to Windows 2000, the user was required to scroll to the bottom of the agreement before they were permitted to agree. # Unless it is an upgrade, the user must create or select a partition, then a filesystem (either

NTFS NT File System (NTFS) (commonly called ''New Technology File System'') is a proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft in the 1990s. It was developed to overcome scalability, security and other limitations with File Allocation Tabl ...

FAT In nutrition science, nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such chemical compound, compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food. The term often refers specif ...

). If either of these file systems is already present and there is no version of Windows already on the disk, it is also possible to leave the current file system intact. # The hard disk is checked for errors and space requirements, then, if it passes the check, Windows will be installed. # After the text-based phase of Setup is finished, the computer reboots and starts a graphical phase of setup from the hard disk, prompting the user to reinsert the installation media, to enter the product key, and then it continues copying files and drivers. All versions of Windows NT up to

Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003, codenamed "Whistler Server", is the sixth major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft and the first server version to be released under the Windows Server brand name. It is part of the Windows NT ...

, except for Windows XP Home Edition, prompt the user to enter an Administrator password. On

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

and Windows Server 2003, the

Recovery Console The Recovery Console is a feature of the Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 operating systems. It provides the means for administrators to perform a limited range of tasks using a command-line interface. Its primary function is to ...

is included to repair damaged installations. It allows the user to repair disk and boot record errors, and copy missing or corrupted files to the destination folders.

After Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008

, and subsequent operating systems all utilize

(Windows PE) as the installation environment. Windows PE features a

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

with mouse support from the beginning, rather than requiring a text-only phase as in previous versions. The concept of F6 disks has been improved to provide support for computers without floppy drives; the loading of drivers from

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains computer data storage, data computers can read, but not write or erase. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold b ...

s and

USB flash drive A flash drive (also thumb drive, memory stick, and pen drive/pendrive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. A typical USB drive is removable, rewritable, and smaller than an optical disc, and u ...

s is now supported. Support for installing Windows onto

partitions has been dropped; Windows must be installed onto an

partition.

Process

# The user inserts a disc or USB flash drive which contains the PE environment and installation files, then boots off of it. # The user selects language, region and keyboard preferences. # The user enters a Windows

product key A product key, also known as a software key, serial key or activation key, is a specific software-based key for a computer program. It certifies that the copy of the program is original. Product keys consist of a series of numbers and/or letters ...

to activate it, though this step can be skipped in most cases. # The user accepts a license agreement. # The user chooses where to install Windows. A list of drives and their partitions are shown. The user picks one to install Windows on, and the user can make new partitions, delete them or load any hardware drivers if necessary. The user is notified if there are potential problems with their install location or if they cannot install on that location. # Setup begins to expand Windows files using a WIM image (aka install.wim). If the user has picked to upgrade from a current install of Windows (e.g. Windows 7 to 10), the files and applications will be transferred. # If booting from the installation disk, the bootloader is installed (in the case of Windows Vista and above, this would be BOOTMGR). This is left untouched if upgrading. # The system is restarted into a user setup (OOBE) where the user can make a new user and finish setting up Windows.

Windows 8 and later

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...

introduces a new secondary installer known as the Upgrade Assistant, replacing Windows Setup for upgrade installations. Designed to be simpler and faster than previous installation methods, it analyses the system's hardware and software for compatibility with Windows 8, allows the user to purchase, download, and install the operating system, and migrate files and settings from the previous Windows installation in the case of a clean install. Windows Setup is still used when booting from installation media. On

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

, a sister program to Upgrade Assistant known as "Media Creation Tool" was introduced, which is used to download the Windows OS files and generate ISO images or USB boot media. In January 2024, Microsoft began to replace Windows Setup on the

Windows 11 Windows 11 is a version of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released on October 5, 2021, as the successor to Windows 10 (2015). It is available as a free upgrade for devices running Windows 10 that meet the #System requirements, Windo ...

boot media with a revamped version based on the UI of Upgrade Assistant. Microsoft stated that the new process would maintain all advanced features available in the existing setup process.

References

{{reflist Windows components Installation software