xp home edition upgrade to xp professional

[Terry]

I am trying to upgrade my system from xp home edition to
xp professional. It is an HP pavillion system and hp
support has been no help. I get the message cannot load
the tape controller? I had to restore system back to xp
home edition. I'm told I have to reformat hard drive to
install xp professional. Is this true? I'm nervous about
doing this. Can anyone help shed some light?

Thanks.

 

[Norm]

That statement is not true. Check out the upgrade matrix at Microsoft and
you'll see the pro is in fact an upgrade path from home. Both use the same
OS but pro has more features that deal with security and networking.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/upgrading/matrix.asp

 

[Alex Nichol]

XP home and professional are different operating systems. Pro is not an
upgrade for home. You should do a clean install of Pro by formatting the
harddrive first. Back up anything you want to save like Quicken backup files
or .doc,.xls, .txt files you have under office to a usb memory stick or
other media.

Pro is an entirely satisfactory upgrade, and is *not* a completely
different system. The cores of the two versions, and most of the system
files, are identical, Pro just has some additional facilities

To upgrade, get the regular Pro Upgrade CD (it does not mention
upgrading Home, but does it). Run it from the existing system - take
Install, continue with Upgrade. USe the Product Key that comes with the
Pro, and the result will need the usual activation on the net