Upgrading from XP Home To XP Pro

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Hi peeps,

I need some help.

I'm going to be starting an NITLC course and will need xp pro installed on my machine.

I have xp home on it already as the pc is only a year old, spec is 40 gig hdd, 512mb ram, mx420 graph, onboard sound from msi mb, modem, cdr/rw & separate dvd rom.

My problem is that i do not have a full copy of windows, just a recovery disk and an image on my hdd. My hdd is split into 3 partitions, boot, backup & recovery.

Would i be able to buy an xp pro upgrade disk or do they only work from windows 98/me?

Ideally I would like to start from scratch and load win xp pro on a single 40gig partition rather than have 3 partitions.

If I used an upgrade disk would I have the option of resizing to one partition when i loaded xp pro?

I do not have driver disks for my hardware but i did receive an application & support cd which i presume contains all the drivers required.

I have just bought partition magic 8 as I wanted to resize the partitions anyway so would this help in loading xp pro?

I really just want to know if there are any known problems in upgrading from home to pro.

Sorry if I have rambled on.

Thanks for your help.

 

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I've thought about this one when I see people on Home that I think should be on Pro, but I've never actually researched it to see if you can just pop in the Pro upgrade disk and make it work. I did a quick google search which didn't lead to any immediate answers.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/upgrading/advisor.asp

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=upgrading+windows+xp+home+to+pro

The second link is just the results of my initial google search. I think you'll have to dig for this one. If I had a choice and the dough, I'd just hose the OS on your current HDD and do a fresh install from a full version of XP Pro. You'll have less problems anyway.

 

Thanks for the help trip.

I did go on to msoft.com myself but couldn't find anything specific about upgrading from home to pro.

According to the advisor you listed, it is possible to upgrade to pro from home using an upgrade disk.

But I think i'll have to do some serious research regarding the different partitions i have together with the fact that I only have a recovery disk as I think during the installation of an upgrade you have to put in the original windows disk to verify that you are eligible to upgrade to the new version.

Still, I suppose uncle bill brought in windows images on hdd with a recovery disk so that people would then have to shell out for more expensive copies of windows if they wished to upgrade. Or am I just being
a wee bit cynical :?:

Anyway thanks for helping trip, much appreciated. If I find out anymore I'll post back as i'm sure i'll not be the last person to ask the question.

Thanks Trip. TTFN

P.S. Goodluck in the new job.

 

Did you do it in the end dutch? I must have missed this post before. I'd say you shouldnt have any problems upgrading from XP Home to Pro. Trip's already given you a great link. The only problems your likely to get is software drivers that may need to be reinstalled but apart from that you should be OK.

I'd always choose a fresh install over an upgrade but thats just me.

HTH

SimonV

 

Hi guy's,

No I haven't plucked up the courage yet!

I think it can be done from an upgrade disk if you have a windows xp home disk but I can find very little info about upgrading when you only have a recovery disk.

I now have a full copy of xp pro so i just have to decide if i'm going to load it on top of xp home or nuke the hdd and start from scratch.

I have just resized the partitions using partition magic 8 (wot a great and simple prog to use!) so I would prefer just to load on top and keep all my exisiting settings.

Would I be right in thinking that if I load on top only the things that are not already present in xp home would be loaded?

Can anyone see any obvious pitfalls in loading on top? (i have 3 partitions c-boot, d-backup both ntfs and e-recovery which holds the image of windows xp home and is fat 32)

Thanks for your help, sorry if this is an easy question to answer but I have never upgraded an os b4.

 

Yup

Only that you'll take any cr@p in your current install to your upgrade.

That's why a clean install is usually recommended, but if you've got a fairly tidy, well-organised system to begin with, you should be OK.

Let us know how it goes, dutch

 

If you have access to a full version of Pro and you can afford to blow away your current install...Do It! It's much easier and cleaner. Then reinstall your apps afterwards and away you go...no muss...no fuss.

 

Hi peeps,

My apologies for not posting for so long, a lot has been going on.

Anyway, managed to load xp pro on top of my xp home install, worked fine.

Had to reload graphics drivers and adjust my settings to get my internet connection working but other than that it worked a treat.

It was quite good having to play about with windows to get things working as you get a good insight how things work.

None of my info was lost or corrupted and I also added 256 mb of memory in the vain hope that champ mgr would run quicker but it is still slow and now they have released a newer version 6 months after I bought it!!!!

Thanks to all who posted and once again sorry for not posting for so long.

 

No worries. I'm impressed you came back and looked after 7 months. Hope you can stick around and enjoy the company.

 

Thanks trip, I will.

How is the job going? :?:

 

Sasser in combination with HP's response to it gave me some fits this a.m. You can visit the "Virus" forum for the details. I got it sorted out. The computer in question has to be switched out with the current test computer in the lab in about 75 minutes so I'm on a holding pattern until then.

Worked the weekend on a contract job upgrading hardware/operating system and doing a lotus notes migration. Decommissioned some servers and cleaned up the mess. Now I'm all refreshed and alert (hah) to tackle this situation.

I feel right at home.