Activation questions and potential problems

[Guest]

Hello,

In short, I am looking to completely upgrade the hardware of my desktop and
swap XP operating systems between the desktop (XP Home) and my laptop (XP
Professional). I can't see this as going smoothly, and hope to get some
advice/ recommendations before I start.

Here is the hardware/software I currently have:

Desktop:
Asus P3B-F motherboard
PIII 550 processor
Windows XP Home

Laptop
Dell Inspiron 2500
Windows XP Professional


Source of the operating systems

The desktop had Windows 98 on it; the laptop came with Windows ME and a
coupon for an XP Home upgrade. When I received the XP Home disks, I kept ME
on the laptop and upgraded the desktop to XP Home (I spoke extensively with
Dell about this to make sure there were no license issues). I eventually
purchased a Windows XP Professional Upgrade. I used this to upgrade the
laptop from WinME to XP Professional. Both operating systems are fully
functional and have SP2 installed. I own an original licensed copy of Windows
98 and the original Dell setup disks for Windows ME.

I would like to switch the operating systems, so that the desktop is running
XP Professional and the Laptop has XP Home. (The desktop is part of a home
network with a Mac, the laptop now sits dormant much of the time).

Is there any chance that there is an easy way to do this? What will happen
if I put the XP Pro upgrade disk in the desktop? Will it move the desktop
from Home to Pro without losing anything? What about when I put the XP Home
disk in the laptop? How do I downgrade that machine without a complete
reinstall? Lastly, should I do this before or after the desktop hardware
upgrade (does it matter?)?


Upgrading the hardware

I am taking the desktop's Intel based system and replacing it with one that
is AMD based. Given the integrated sound and network of the intended MIS
board, everything is going to be different except the hard drive. In my nice,
safe, comfortable dream world, I would like to swap out the board, processor,
and graphics card, boot up and have XP recognize new hardware, ask for the
original Windows disk for driver files, maybe ask to re-activate, and be done
with it. Odds of that happening?

After being configured for the Pentium system, will the drive as-is be able
to even boot up on the AMD system? Would it work in Safe Mode? Is there
anything I can do ahead of time to prepare it?

If it comes to it, I have a spare, blank drive that I could format, install
Win 98, then install the XP upgrade. But that strikes me as a nightmare of an
alternative—I don't want to lose/redo all of the customizations and tweaks
I've done to my desktop.

I think that covers everything. FWIW, before I do anything, I'll be using
Ghost to make a complete image of my current drive to a new drive and locking
that away in a cabinet until all is over (then repartitioning and using it as
a data drive on the new system).


Thanks in advance if you can offer any help or point me to other sources.

Jeff

 

[Ron Martell]

Hello,

In short, I am looking to completely upgrade the hardware of my desktop and
swap XP operating systems between the desktop (XP Home) and my laptop (XP
Professional). I can't see this as going smoothly, and hope to get some
advice/ recommendations before I start.

Here is the hardware/software I currently have:

Desktop:
Asus P3B-F motherboard
PIII 550 processor
Windows XP Home

Laptop
Dell Inspiron 2500
Windows XP Professional


Source of the operating systems

The desktop had Windows 98 on it; the laptop came with Windows ME and a
coupon for an XP Home upgrade. When I received the XP Home disks, I kept ME
on the laptop and upgraded the desktop to XP Home (I spoke extensively with
Dell about this to make sure there were no license issues). I eventually
purchased a Windows XP Professional Upgrade. I used this to upgrade the
laptop from WinME to XP Professional. Both operating systems are fully
functional and have SP2 installed. I own an original licensed copy of Windows
98 and the original Dell setup disks for Windows ME.

I would like to switch the operating systems, so that the desktop is running
XP Professional and the Laptop has XP Home. (The desktop is part of a home
network with a Mac, the laptop now sits dormant much of the time).

Is there any chance that there is an easy way to do this? What will happen
if I put the XP Pro upgrade disk in the desktop? Will it move the desktop
from Home to Pro without losing anything? What about when I put the XP Home
disk in the laptop? How do I downgrade that machine without a complete
reinstall? Lastly, should I do this before or after the desktop hardware
upgrade (does it matter?)?


Upgrading the hardware

I am taking the desktop's Intel based system and replacing it with one that
is AMD based. Given the integrated sound and network of the intended MIS
board, everything is going to be different except the hard drive. In my nice,
safe, comfortable dream world, I would like to swap out the board, processor,
and graphics card, boot up and have XP recognize new hardware, ask for the
original Windows disk for driver files, maybe ask to re-activate, and be done
with it. Odds of that happening?

After being configured for the Pentium system, will the drive as-is be able
to even boot up on the AMD system? Would it work in Safe Mode? Is there
anything I can do ahead of time to prepare it?

If it comes to it, I have a spare, blank drive that I could format, install
Win 98, then install the XP upgrade. But that strikes me as a nightmare of an
alternative—I don't want to lose/redo all of the customizations and tweaks
I've done to my desktop.

I think that covers everything. FWIW, before I do anything, I'll be using
Ghost to make a complete image of my current drive to a new drive and locking
that away in a cabinet until all is over (then repartitioning and using it as
a data drive on the new system).


Thanks in advance if you can offer any help or point me to other sources.

Jeff

Hi Jeff.

Your XP Pro license is a Retail Upgrade version and therefore it is
licensed to you and you are free to move it from computer to computer
to computer to computer as you see fit, provided that it is only ever
installed on a single computer at any point in time.

Your XP Home license may be different. There is no such thing as an
"OEM Upgrade" so I suspect that it is a retail license as well. You
can confirm this by:
1. Looking at the Product I.D. value in My Computer - System -
General. It is the 20 character code at the bottom of the "Registered
to:" section. If the second segment (3 characters) of the Product
I.D. read OEM then that is an OEM license and is therefore permanently
locked to the first computer that it was installed on. If it is
numeric then it is not an OEM license.
2. Read the End User License Agreement terms for that license, which
are in the file c:\windows\system32\eula.txt

If your XP Home license is also the retail version then you are free
to transfer the licenses between the two computers.

I assume that there is one (or more) of the specific functions or
features in XP Pro that is not found in XP Home which you want to use
on the desktop machine and which you do not need on the laptop.
Because other than these specific items the two versions of Windows
are the same.

Good luck



Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm