Quick upgrade from Home Edition to Professional Edition

[Guest]

My sister just bought a Dell 2400 dimension desktop and it came with Windows XP Home Edition. She wants Windows XP Professional which I have on my laptop. She inserted the disk into her desktop and followed the instructions on how to do a quick upgrade but after the process got about half way through a blue screen came up and said that there was an error. The message read bad_pool_car error. She followed the instructions on this page and restarted the computer but because the process had gotten so far through it starts up and automatically goes to the Windows XP Professional welcome screen. After that it says that the upgrade is restarting and it picks up where it left off.
She is unable to get to the desktop on the computer where she would normally be able to click on the start button and if she takes the disc out for XP Professional a bunch of error messages pop up and ask her to put the disc back in. Of course after doing so the computer only gets as far as half way through the quick upgrade process and it gives her the same error message.
She has tried going in through safe mode but it doesn't get her anywhere. Just back to the same installing screen. She's also tried to run diagnostic tests on the computer thinking that maybe there was a problem with some hardware she had installed.
Any information you could provide us would be greatly appreciated.

--rach

 

[Guest]

Boot from cd, and press 'r' for repair. In the recovery console prompt, use the command BOOTCFG to change the boot.ini to start in Home again.

 

[Guest]

when we restart the computer it only gives us 2 choices. hit F2 or F12. hitting r does nothing. it just continues on its way to trying to upgrade. if the pro cd is in the drive it gets to the error message and stops. if the home cd is in the drive it says there was a fatal error because the product drive could not be found. either way we can't get the home edition back up. is there another way to get to the recovery console?

 

[Miss Perspicacia Tick]

Boot from cd, and press 'r' for repair. In the recovery console
prompt, use the command BOOTCFG to change the boot.ini to start in
Home again.

Rachel,

The disc that came with your laptop is OEM and, as such, is tied to that
system forever - it cannot be installed on any other. Even if it was retail,
you'd have to format the hard drive before your sister could install it on
her system as it's ONE LICENCE PER SYSTEM. Not only that but, by installing
an OS other than the one that was installed at the point-of-sale, she could
invalidate her warranty and Dell would no longer support her.

 

[D.Currie]

My sister just bought a Dell 2400 dimension desktop and it came with

Windows XP Home Edition. She wants Windows XP Professional which I have on
my laptop. She inserted the disk into her desktop and followed the
instructions on how to do a quick upgrade but after the process got about
half way through a blue screen came up and said that there was an error.
The message read bad_pool_car error. She followed the instructions on this
page and restarted the computer but because the process had gotten so far
through it starts up and automatically goes to the Windows XP Professional
welcome screen. After that it says that the upgrade is restarting and it
picks up where it left off.

She is unable to get to the desktop on the computer where she would

normally be able to click on the start button and if she takes the disc out
for XP Professional a bunch of error messages pop up and ask her to put the
disc back in. Of course after doing so the computer only gets as far as
half way through the quick upgrade process and it gives her the same error
message.

She has tried going in through safe mode but it doesn't get her anywhere.

Just back to the same installing screen. She's also tried to run diagnostic
tests on the computer thinking that maybe there was a problem with some
hardware she had installed.

Any information you could provide us would be greatly appreciated.

--rach

The XP pro cd was made specifically for your laptop model; I'm surprised it
even started to install. I'm not surprised that it failed.

At this point, there's probably no going back to Home as you attempted an
upgrade and some of the Home file were overwritten by Pro.

You might have a chance of installing Pro if you buy a retail version and
try that. But it might not work, which would mean you'd need to format the
drive and do a clean install. And you might have some problems getting
drivers for the laptop. But if you really need pro, that's the way to go.

Or you could go back to Home by installing it clean with whatever software
you got with the laptop. If you can't figure out how to do that, you should
contact the maker of the laptop, as it's their customized software and not a
generic XP install.

Whatever you do, you're going to lose anything that you haven't already
backed up. The only way to save it would be to put the hard drive in another
computer as a secondary drive and move the files over. To install a laptop
drive into a regular computer, you'll need a special adapter.

 

[Guest]

Thanks to everyone who gave me advice. My sister ended up calling Dell and
having them tell her what to do over the phone. Her desktop is back to
normal now. Next time I'll just tell her that if she wants a program on her
computer from my laptop that she'll have to buy it or order from Dell.
Thanks again.