Partitioning your drive

Start by making sure you've backed up all important data on your hard drive. Install PartitionMagic. Restart Windows. Run PartitionMagic. Select your main drive volume (your C: drive) and then, from the Partition menu, choose Resize/Move. Use the slider to move the right edge of your main drive to the left, to reduce the size of your main drive. Then choose Partition > Create. Let Partition Magic assign the drive letter. Finally, choose Partition > Format, and format the new partition with NTFS (required for Vista Beta 2).

Partition Magic carries out the changes you direct in batch mode. So, when you're done, click the Apply button in the Operations Pending area. PartitionMagic will need to restart your computer to carry out some of these operations; just let it do so. PartitionMagic wants you to create backup disks. I'll be frank, I don't do this. And I've never needed them. That doesn't mean you'll lead as charmed a life. If it's the first time you're using PartitionMagic, I recommend doing this.

When your computer boots back into Windows, you should find a new drive in My Computer. Double-check that you can open it.

Your next step is to install Vista. You can either do this by booting to the Vista disc or just inserting the disc while your previous version of Windows is running. I find the second method to be a little faster, but not if you have to wait to boot your old version of Windows. The results are the same either way. Among the first several screens is one that asks you where you want to install Windows. Be sure to choose the partition whose drive letter matches the one you just created. Because that partition is empty, Vista will perform a clean installation.