Replacing corrupt XP Pro with XP home edition

[Terry D Turner]

A friend has a PC with XP pro that is not genuine. I think it best to install
XP Home to replace it for price reasons and its a stand alone PC.

Can both operating systems sit on the one computer with a switch to select
the XP home at run-time in the future? Is this too complicated? should XP
Home be installed and then XP pro removed?

Any help would be good.

Thanks Terry

 

[Malke]

A friend has a PC with XP pro that is not genuine. I think it best to
install XP Home to replace it for price reasons and its a stand alone PC.

Can both operating systems sit on the one computer with a switch to select
the XP home at run-time in the future? Is this too complicated? should XP
Home be installed and then XP pro removed?

You should back up your friend's data and do a clean install with a legal
copy of XP Home.

http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html - Clean Install How-To
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Reinstalling_Windows - What
you will need on-hand

Malke

 

[Paul]

A friend has a PC with XP pro that is not genuine. I think it best to install
XP Home to replace it for price reasons and its a stand alone PC.

Can both operating systems sit on the one computer with a switch to select
the XP home at run-time in the future? Is this too complicated? should XP
Home be installed and then XP pro removed?

Any help would be good.

Thanks Terry

Everyone will have their own answer to this. My answer is
"one OS per hard drive". I select the hard drives at
boot time, using the BIOS boot menu (mine is accessed
via pressing F11). I can select one of two disks, and
then the BIOS takes over and boots up.

When you prepare the hard drive, you can try to give
the new volume a label. That can be handy later,
when you'll looking at volumes in Disk Management
or otherwise, and you're trying to remember "what
is this anyway ?". You could call it WinXP_2 for
example.

Another thing I do, is take a piece of tape which
I can write on with a pen. I write a descriptive
label on the drive, such as "original WinXP for Core2",
or "new WinXP home install". That way, some day when the
disks are sitting on a work bench, and you're wondering
where the drive came from, the little piece of tape
will give you a necessary hint.

Hard drives are now so cheap, you can get them for $40 or
less. For example, this one is 80GB and is $35. That
is big enough for a boot volume and some program installs.
You can also get IDE ones for that cheap as well, but
be aware that IDE is going away soon. If you want some,
now is a good time to pick up spares etc.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148231

In terms of an installation procedure, what I do is disconnect
all existing drives first. I leave the new disk connected
and an optical drive for the installer CD. I do the install.
Then I boot the computer, at least once, with the new hard
drive. That way, with the other drives disconnected, there is
no possibility of an accident or adverse interaction.
Once one reboot has been done, then I shut down, and reconnect
the other drives. At that point, I'm free to use my
F11 key at bootup, to select the new drive, or one
of the other drives.

As you can tell from that, I'm not a big fan of boot managers.
I hate surprises, and many OS installers choose to be more
aggressive than they should be. Some don't even ask nicely,
before blasting something.

Paul

 

[Bruce Chambers]

A friend has a PC with XP pro that is not genuine. I think it best to install
XP Home to replace it for price reasons and its a stand alone PC.

Can both operating systems sit on the one computer with a switch to select
the XP home at run-time in the future?

Yes, one could install both WinXP Home and WinXP Pro in a dual-boot
configuration, if so desired, but they're be very few reasons for doing
so. The WinXP Home and WinXP Pro versions are _identical_ when it comes
to performance, stability, and device driver and software application
compatibility, but are intended to meet different functionality,
networking, security, and ease-of-use needs, in different environments.

Is this too complicated?

That depends entirely upon the capabilities of the individual
performing the installations. For instance, I'd call it simple, but the
fact that you have to ask such a question (And I'm not being
deliberately facetious or insulting) means that you may not be ready for
this challenge, just yet.

should XP
Home be installed and then XP pro removed?

Well, there's really not much point in having an illicit copy of WinXP
Pro installed when one has a legitimate license for WinXP Home, now is
there?

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

After backing up any data you wish to transfer to the new OS
installation, 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

Then the backed up data can be restored and applications
re-installed from their original installation media.


--

Bruce Chambers

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