XP Home upgrade to XP Pro

[WayneP]

My PC came with XP Home (and a lot of trash applications)
preinstalled. I plan on buying the Pro upgrade.

At some time in the future, I would like to reformat the
system disk to get rid of all the "trash", reinstall
Windows XP Pro, and install just the applications that I
use (I have valid licenses and installation disks for all
of them - I won't need and don't want anything from the
bundle that came preinstalled on my system). Upgrades to
earlier versions of Windows required access to
a "qualifying" CD for installation if the upgraded
version was not found on the disk.

My pre-sales question:

What is required to "qualify" the installation of the XP
Pro upgrade? Will my current activation of XP Home do
the job or will I need to let the installer "see"
a "qualifying" CD and if so, which CD?

BTW - I have Windows 98, 98SE, and ME upgrade CDs, plus
a "System Recovery CD" that came with my current computer
(XP Home).

 

[BobDelaney]

Why not just remove the pre-installed applications you don't want and
save yourself both the expense and the bother of upgrading to the same
operating system that you already have? Use Control Panel's Add/Remove
Programs facility to do this. There is no reason to migrate from XP Home to
XP Pro unless you are either a high-end web developer who needs to test ASP
script in a local IIS environment (and if the acronyms are unfamiliar, you
are not) or unless you are connected to a large corporate network.
You already have Windows XP on your system. Why run an upgrade to the
same thing? There is no quantitative or qualitative advantage to XP Pro over
XP Home. They are byte-for-byte the same operating system. Neither is
'superior' or 'better'
than the other. They are the same thing.

 

[WayneP]

Thanks for the response.

I have already tried "Removing" the bundled apps. Many
of them do not show up in "Add/Remove Programs" and do
not have uninstallation utilities - meaning that they
either have to be removed manually or I just remove the
executables, leaving the registry entries, DLL, and any
other system "contributions" in place. Given the sheer
number of them, I think it's easier to simply reinstall
the OS. One concern is the system efficiency but another
is to get the system image down so it can be imaged on
one DVD.

My computer has a "System Recovery" disk set, but I've
not had good luck doing "clean" reinstalls
from "recovery" disks in the past.

Do you, or anyone, know the answer to my question
about "qualifying" the upgrade? I am not trying to do
anything in violation of the license, I have a valid
running copy of XP home on the machine in question, but
if I want (or have) to do a clean install using the
upgrade, what's involved?