If, like me, you find yourself with a pre release Windows XP x64 ISO file and you are not sure what to do with it. Here is a step by step guide for burning that image to a CD and then installing it onto your hard drive.

I installed XP x64 last night without incident. Plug and play managed to correctly identity and install drivers for all my devices. I did have to download the Radeon beta drivers for x64 before I was able to run Doom3. The ATI setup program quits before the drivers install correctly but you can manually install them by browsing to the location they were extracted to. I haven’t really had a chance to install many applications yet but the ones that I have all seem to work fine.

I believe the final release is due sometime in April. I have also heard that Microsoft is going to allow registered users of XP to download it for free. I haven’t been able to confirm that from any source other then from the guy at the local computer shop though. I’ll let you know.