Installing OpenELEC Part 1 (Windows)

Installing OpenELEC can be daunting if you don't regularly use Linux, but the installation has been very streamlined to make installing OpenELEC as easy as possible.

The installer for OpenELEC isn't like other installers; wiith OpenELEC, the first thing you do is create a USB key that you can install from - much like you would traditionally install sofware from a CD. This installer key is what we're going to createin this first part.

Things you'll need:

• A Windows computer (your normal PC)
• A USB key to use as your installer
• The latest release of OpenELEC

Once it's downloaded, you'll have a file that ends in .tar.bz2 - this file contains the OpenELEC installer files. You'll need a program that can extract the files from this file, I'd suggest you use 7zip (mainly because it's free) so get it here then extract the files from the archive.

Once the files have extracted, enter the folder you extracted to and you should see lots of files and folders. The file we're most interested in is create_installstick.bat which will create an installer USB key.

Insert your installer USB key (if you're going to boot your OpenELEC install from a USB key, you'll need two keys - one for the installer and one to install to).

Note: make sure there's nothing important on it as it'll get wiped as part of the process.

Now, double-click on the batch file and you should get a new window appear.

Note: If you're running Windows Vista or Windows 7, administrator rights are required. If your current account needs elevating, before the above window appears, you'll be prompted by windows' UAC:

Simply click 'Yes' to continue.

After a quick check in My Computer, I can see my USB key is E (my CD-ROM drive is D). So I enter the following and press enter:

The installer now creates the bootable USB stick:

After around 20 seconds, it's finished:

Have a look at your USB key in Windows explorer quickly - you should see the following files if all has gone well:

Good. Safely remove your USB key and carry on to the second part of the installation guide.