New laptop with just DOS in it

Question

I will be recieving a new laptop with just DOS in it and I have to install the OS myself, so iw as wondering is installing a new OS in this laptop is same as formatting any old laptop/pc?

Edit: just one more doubt, any particular format of file system for disks I should be preferring, what I mean is it asks NTFS or other types, which should I choose?

Answer 1

Every OS I am familiar with has a bootable CD that has a disk manager included. This will not even need DOS to install. Just pop the CD in, make sure the BIOS is set to boot from CD, turn the computer on, and follow instructions.

Ok, well then for clarification: DOS is an OS. It's just a blinking curser to some, but it's really a full OS. You just don't see it anymore.

So there's a difference between "No OS" and "DOS".

But the answer is still the same. Get the right OS disk and it does not matter one little bit what is on the hard drive already.

Answer 2

Yes,it is. just make sure you collect the required drivers before starting off.

Hopefully it is something like a Thinkpad where most of it works OOTB and the remaining drivers are easy to find

Answer 3

Pretty much you should be able to insert your favourite OS DVD or CD into the drive and you should be able to either change the boot order in the BIOS to make the machine boot from CD or you may have a "boot manager" option on your BIOS startup screen.

Almost every machine I've seen these days has a boot manager.

After that you should simply be able to follow the normal method to install your OS over the DOS install.

-=EDIT=-

To answer your edit, for Windows Vista and Windows 7 you will not likely get a choice about drive format, they will use NTFS by default, and for Windows XP NTFS would be best as it will support the security controls the OS works with.

On Linux the choice is somewhat arbitrary as there are a whole selection of filesystems to use, the standard is ext4 these days and should be considered good and stable, but there are lots of slightly different systems which have subtle performance differences (I believe ReiserFS works better with many small files). Generally whatever OS you install will have a pretty reasonable default choice that you might as well stick with.