Upon commencing the installation of OS/2 Version 2.0, using the installation diskette, the user is presented with a simple character-based screen which requests the user to insert the initial operating system diskette into the diskette drive. The first six diskettes (installation diskette and operating system diskettes 1 to 5) are used to prepare and partition the fixed disk, install Boot Manager and dual boot if required, and load the basic code required to drive the graphical installation procedure.
Once this code is transferred to the system's fixed disk, the installation procedure prompts the user to reboot the system. When the system restarts, the Presentation Manager shell is loaded and the graphical installation procedure is immediately invoked. Since the operating system has now been loaded off the fixed disk, paging is enabled, relieving constraints on real memory.
The graphical installation procedure supports both mouse and keyboard input. A generic mouse driver is provided by the graphical installation procedure, in order to support mouse input before the specific mouse driver is identified and loaded. This means that certain pointing devices might not be usable at this time and only keyboard input will be accepted.
The graphical installation procedure first presents the user with a single dialog box, centered on the screen. This dialog box enables the user to select one of several options:
These options are displayed to the user as radio buttons. Since both mouse and keyboard support are fully enabled within the graphical installation procedure, the user may use either method to select an option. The user then selects the OK pushbutton to continue.
If the user elects to install all options, the installation procedure immediately requests that the user insert the next diskette into the diskette drive.
If the user wishes to select particular options to install, the installation procedure presents a further series of dialog boxes from which the user selects the required options and features. See Installation Options, below.