Davenk said:
A student friend of mine upgraded his PC and then installed a pirated copy of
XP Pro. He wants to get legal and I have advised him to buy a copy of XP
Home(cheaper). I am afraid the Home version will not install with a Pro
version in place. Will it? If not, what is the best plan? Thanks
Your friend will need to purchase and use a _legitimate_ full
retail copy of WinXP Pro to perform a repair (a.k.a. in-place upgrade)
installation, using the new CD and Product Key.
How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;Q315341
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.
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
--
Bruce Chambers
Help us help you:
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH
