After booting from the DVD , the first thing was the new light blue Windows logo on a black background, as shown in below snapshot. This image remained on the screen for a few moments while Setup was initializing.  

After a few minutes, you’ll see the Windows Setup screen shown in below snapshot and you will specify your language settings before clicking Next. When you do, Setup will perform some more initialization tasks in the background.

As soon as the initial steps are taken care of, you’ll see the Windows Setup screen  and will click the Install Now button.

Once you click the Install now button, you’ll see the beginning of the information collection phase of the installation procedure. The first step here is to input the Windows 8 product key.

The next step is to acknowledge that you accept the license terms,  If you take the time to read through them, you will see that Microsoft has indeed radically overhauled EULA as Ed Bott over at ZDNet wrote about in a recent column.

Even if you don’t take the time to read the license terms during the installation, once you have installed Windows 8, you can find the Microsoft Software License Agreement in the Windows Help and Support system - just search with the term License. Not only is the license shorter in length, but it is also much clearer and easier to read.




















When you are prompted to choose which type of installation you want to perform, as shown in below snapshot, you’ll choose Custom: Install Windows only (advanced) type in order to perform a clean install of Windows 8.




















When you are prompted to choose where you want to install Windows,  you’ll see a list of any partitions that are currently on your hard disk. As you can see in my example system there are actually four separate partitions. You may have a different combination depending on your system. The first partition in this list is labeled System Reserved and it was created automatically during the Windows 7 installation. A new System Reserved partition will be created by Windows 8, so you can remove existing one. The partition labeled Recovery contains the OEM recovery for Windows 7. I created the recovery DVDs soon after I got the new system. It won’t do me any good going forward with Windows 8 anyway, so I will remove that partition too. The partition labeled WIN7 contains the Windows 7 installation that I am replacing, so it is definitely going. The partition labeled DATA contains all of my data that I copied to an external hard disk, so it is safe to blow that one away too.





















To begin blowing away partitions, you start by clicking Drive options (advanced). When you do so, you’ll see a list of commands for managing partitions : 




















Now, you’ll select each of the partitions, one by one, and select the Delete command. When you do, you’ll see a confirmation prompt like the one shown in below snapshot. Just click OK to delete the partition.




















Once you delete each of the existing partitions, you’ll see that all of the space will be combined together in one chunk labeled Unallocated Space,  While you could create a new partition and format it, you don’t have to. Windows 8 will automatically take care of that in the next step. So just go ahead and click Next.

Installing Windows

When you click Next, Setup creates the partition, formats it, and then instantly moves into the Installing Windows phase which begins with copying and getting files ready for the installation, as shown in below snapshot. This process will take a while to progress though, so you can sit back and relax a bit.




















When this phase of the process is complete, Windows will alert you that it is going to restart in order to continue,  If you are really impatient and really quick, you can click the Restart now button.











































Upon restarting you’ll see the black screen with the blue Windows logo and see that Setup is getting devices ready, as  soon as that part of the process is complete, Windows will alert you that it is going to restart again.........

Configuring Windows

When the system restarts, you’ll be prompted to choose a color scheme for Windows 8 and a PC name :



















When the Settings screen appears,  you can choose to customize these settings or you can allow Windows to use the express settings. If you are unsure, you can click the Learn more link and get more details. 



















On the next screen, you’ll choose how you want to sign on to Windows 8, While you can choose to sign in with a local account, I would recommend that you use an existing Microsoft (email) account, such as a Hotmail.com or a Live.com account. If you don’t have a Microsoft account, you can sign up for one or you can use any email address that you want and Windows 8 will create an account for you.



















The advantage of using an existing Microsoft account or creating one is that you will be able to instantly use the Windows Store, will be able to easily sync settings between multiple Windows 8 computers, and be able to easily take advantage of other Windows 8 features. I already have a Microsoft account, so I entered it here.

After filling the details of your account on the next couple of screens, you’ll eventually see a screen that changes color as it alerts you the Setup is getting your PC ready. The green version of this screen is show in below snapshot : 



















As you may know, Windows 8 comes with a host of native apps for the Start screen interface that replace and add to the group of applications that used to come with previous versions of Windows. 



















Once the apps are installed, you’ll see the Start screen, and can begin using Windows 8.