Upgrading Home>>Pro

[Michael Hobbs]

This question must have been asked a million times but I have looked through
recent posts and not seen it.

I have two computers that came with XP Home, including the HP laptop I am
writing on now. I was given no choice at the time of purchase as to O.S.

Isn't there Any way of upgrading Home to Pro without taking the drive down
with a clean format and doing the whole thing over? Gosh, they are so
similar except for networking you would think the world's biggest software
company would let you give them your credit card # and do it online...

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Isn't there Any way of upgrading Home to Pro without taking the
drive
down with a clean format and doing the whole thing over?

Sure, you can upgrade XP Home to Professional. There is no
special upgrade version just for this, but the regular XP
Professional Upgrade works fine (although it doesn't say so on
the box). It's the easiest and most likely successful of all
possible upgrades.


But are you sure you want to do this? Are you aware that XP Home
and Professional are identical except that Professional includes
a few features (mostly related to security and networking)
missing from Home? Most home users don't need and would never use
these extra features and will see no benefits by upgrading.



For details go to

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_home_pro.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/whichxp.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/howtobuy/choosing2.asp

Also note that Professional allows ten concurrent network
connections, and Home only five.

 

[Tom Porterfield]

This question must have been asked a million times but I have looked through
recent posts and not seen it.

I have two computers that came with XP Home, including the HP laptop I am
writing on now. I was given no choice at the time of purchase as to O.S.

Isn't there Any way of upgrading Home to Pro without taking the drive down
with a clean format and doing the whole thing over? Gosh, they are so
similar except for networking you would think the world's biggest software
company would let you give them your credit card # and do it online...

The upgrade version of XP Pro can be used to upgrade XP Home. It's not
quite as simple as just giving MS your credit card number and going.
You'll need to purchase a copy of XP Pro upgrade to proceed. You'll
want to get one that has SP2 included as your XP Home install most
likely has SP2 applied.
--
Tom Porterfield
MS-MVP Windows
http://support.telop.org

Please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup only.

 

[philo]

This question must have been asked a million times but I have looked
through recent posts and not seen it.

I have two computers that came with XP Home, including the HP laptop I am
writing on now. I was given no choice at the time of purchase as to O.S.

Isn't there Any way of upgrading Home to Pro without taking the drive down
with a clean format and doing the whole thing over? Gosh, they are so
similar except for networking you would think the world's biggest software
company would let you give them your credit card # and do it online...

first off...
you can upgrade to XP pro...
however if you are networking just two machines...
you can easily do so with the home edition!

 

[Harry Ohrn]

It sounds like you are wondering why Microsoft doesn't have a downloadable
upgrade "patch" that would turn XP Home version into XP Professional
version. Much like applying a service pack but you'd be required to pay for
it. Likely the reason this is not available has to do with the number of
times such a "patch" would be requested. While you might think it would be a
common request it likely would be highly uncommon. The numbers of people who
need to upgrade from Home to Professional are very few.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Upgrading from Home to Pro is a supported upgrade.

The differences between Home and Pro are more fundamental than appearances
would suggest. For example, Pro supports dual processors but Home does not.
Pro can join a Domain, Home cannot, and so on.

You upgrade to Pro from Home by inserting the Pro cd (retail) while Home is
up and running and when the splash screen appears select Upgrade. Your
programs, files, and settings will be preserved. You will need to visit
Microsoft Update afterwards to bring the OS all the way up to date. I
suggest that you defragment the drive first and then again when finished.