XP Home vs XP Pro

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I do not have an XP home CD. This computer came without the CD and the manufacturer is out of business. I have a XP Pro CD that I can use if I knew it would do the trick of “repairing/installing” the XP system. I haven’t performed a reinstall since I bought this computer in 2005. The sys is slow I want to get it to work better. Microsoft no longer sells the XP CD and I don’t want to pay some 80-90 dollars for a CD. Although I did find a “XP OEM CD” for 30 dollars and I am not comfortable buying that CD.

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I do not have an XP home CD. This computer came without the CD and the manufacturer is out of business. I have a XP Pro CD that I can use if I knew it would do the trick of “repairing/installing” the XP system. I haven’t performed a reinstall since I bought this computer in 2005. The sys is slow I want to get it to work better. Microsoft no longer sells the XP CD and I don’t want to pay some 80-90 dollars for a CD. Although I did find a “XP OEM CD” for 30 dollars and I am not comfortable buying that CD.

If you have a key for the XP Pro edition then you are golden. The key attached to your PC is for a Home edition and will most likely fail to activate the Pro edition. Be careful buying any “Keys” online for these older OSs. In most cases people have been disappointed when they find they can’t activate their OS with these “Keys”.

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If you didn’t get *any* Windows CDs with your computer, then it’s likely that your computer will have a “recovery partition” on it instead, which you should be able to use to reinstall – but the disadvantage is that such recovery partitions will generally wipe all data on the disc and reset it to exactly how it was when you got it, so you’d need to back up any data that you needed beforehand.

Unfortunately, the way you use this recovery partition differs between computers, so there’s no single answer that anyone can give. If you want to use it, try looking for a message at bootup (before the Windows logo) that gives you a key to press if you want to recover; if you see one, that’s probably the way you use it. Otherwise, it might help to say where you got your computer from, and what model it is – that might help in finding how to use it.

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If you have the license sticker with the key you can borrow a CD from a friend to re-install, then put the key in. Alternatively you can use Jellybean key finder to find the key used on your system.
Don’t forget to backup before the re-install.

cheers, Paul

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I have a XP Pro CD that I can use if I knew it would do the trick of “repairing/installing” the XP system …

Like others have said, you would need a Pro key to do an installation … yet that CD just might do a repair on your Home. If you want to try, just let the CD boot, then carefully follow the instructions for repairing an existing installation. And of course, you should first back up your important data.

Overall, however, you will probably end up in better shape if you back up your important stuff and do a complete re-install, and you can do that with any XP Home disk as long as you have your own key available during installation and you are able to activate it online later.

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I do not have an XP home CD. This computer came without the CD and the manufacturer is out of business. I have a XP Pro CD that I can use if I knew it would do the trick of “repairing/installing” the XP system.

The XP Pro disk will do just fine as long as you have the key for that disk and it’s not tied to another machine.
Even if it was previously on another machine you shouldn’t have any issues as long as it’s been uninstalled
from that machine.

Repair, no. Do the clean install, it’s long overdue.

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It gets to be a sticky wicket, trying to deal with an OS that MS is trying their best to be rid of.
You may as well be talking about windows 98.

Legally, I can’t tell you (here) what I’d do in your place.

But I do wish you “Good Luck”.

Doc

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You really don’t need the CD but you do need the key. The system can usually be reinstalled from your hard drive. Do a search for the file Winnt.exe which is usually in the I386 file or somewhere in your Windows file. Double-click the Winnt.exe file and the reinstall will begin. If you can’t locate the key before you start either download and run Jellybean Keyfinder or Belarc Advisor. Advisor will give you the keys for most software on your system. If you don’t want to lose your applications or data, and you haven’t backed up your computer do a search for Windows non-destructive reinstall by Fred Langa. Good luck!

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You really don’t need the CD but you do need the key. The system can usually be reinstalled from your hard drive. Do a search for the file Winnt.exe which is usually in the I386 file or somewhere in your Windows file. Double-click the Winnt.exe file and the reinstall will begin. If you can’t locate the key before you start either download and run Jellybean Keyfinder or Belarc Advisor. Advisor will give you the keys for most software on your system. If you don’t want to lose your applications or data, and you haven’t backed up your computer do a search for Windows non-destructive reinstall by Fred Langa. Good luck!

You cannot repartition/reformat with this install method..

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