installing home edition instead of xp professional

[Guest]

my hard drive crashed recently and I used my parents copy of xp professional
till dell sent me a new copy of my reinstallation disk. Windows now says I
have an illegal version (of course). How can I install my copy of home
edition in replace of professional w/o loosing information?

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

my hard drive crashed recently and I used my parents copy of xp
professional till dell sent me a new copy of my reinstallation disk.
Windows now says I have an illegal version (of course). How can I
install my copy of home edition in replace of professional w/o
loosing information?

Sorry, you can't There is no way to downgrade from Professional to Home.
Your only choice is to backup your data and reinstall cleanly.

 

[DL]

Only by a clean install, you will lose all data/apps
ie you will have to backup all data to recover after the claen install

 

[Bruce Chambers]

my hard drive crashed recently and I used my parents copy of xp professional
till dell sent me a new copy of my reinstallation disk. Windows now says I
have an illegal version (of course). How can I install my copy of home
edition in replace of professional w/o loosing information?

The only way to change from WinXP Pro to WinXP Home is to
format the drive and start over. There is no supported downgrade path
or technique.

After backing up any data you wish to preserve, simply boot from
the WinXP Home installation CD. You'll be offered the opportunity to
delete, create, and format partitions as part of the installation
process. (You may need to re-arrange the order of boot devices in the
PC's BIOS to boot from the CD.)

HOW TO Install Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;316941

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm

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Bruce Chambers

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