Filed under: Computer Diagnostic Software
I want to reinstall win. xp home and get win.xp proffessinal off my computer?
February 19, 2010
2 thoughts on “I want to reinstall win. xp home and get win.xp proffessinal off my computer?”
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Clean Registry and Optimize PC
If you bought your pc with windows xp home edition then you should be able to do a system recovery which basically returns it to the manufactured/out-of-box state (this will wipe out everything). You can do this by going into start>accessories>system tools. You may need a cd that came with the manufacturer for this. If you don’t have the cd, you may be able to request one from the manufacturer.
If your pc originally came with something other than windows xp home edition, there is not much you can do because windows xp home edition install disks have stopped being produced (since last June). You can see if a friend has it, but I think that’s about it.
You will need a full version disk of XP Home. I advise against Home because Microsoft no longer supports it. I realize it is $50 cheaper, but there are some support tools on there that are really good. But, nevertheless… As with any fresh install, you need access to your BIOS to set the ROM drive to the first boot device. Otherwise, the computer will not boot into the ROM drive and execute the installer. Also, make sure that ACPI is ENABLED in the power section of the BIOS.
Go to the vendor of your exact machine and download ALL of the drivers for your computer, including all of the motherboard drivers. XP does NOT COME WITH the drivers for your chipset, you sound card, your LAN or ethernet connector, PCMCIA connector, or anything else except for a stock VGA (crap) driver. You will also need to download the SATA driver for your hard disk(s) and you will need to UNPACK the SATA DRIVER. Make sure all of the drivers are unpacked and not in some kind of ZIP file format. The SATA driver in particular, is very important. If you have an older computer with IDE hard disks, then you are ok and need not worry. Make sure you have the video driver too! YOu can go to nVidia and let them scan your laptop and then download the right driver. I think ATI also has this same service, just look into the ATI drivers and try to locate your video chip there. Download all drivers and unpack them. Specifically, unpack the SATA drivers and have them available as unpacked files. Burn a CD with all the drivers unpacked. Now there is a very curious problem with XP Home. You have to HOLD DOWN F6 on immediate execution, just do it! Hold down F6 when the installer begins. Now let off. Let XP load the stock generic drivers, and then a box will pop up asking you what kind of CPU you have. If you have a dual core or quad core, then pick from the scrolled list:
MULTICORE PROCESSOR WITH ACPI ENABLED. DO NOT FAILE TO DO THIS! or the HAL (hardware abstraction layer) in XP will BE CORRUPTED! This is another big reason why I HATE the home edition, because it has this flaw in the installer that Microsoft NEVER TELLS anyone about. So make sure you do this. Now, next, when the installer has installed all of the generic drivers, and if you have SATA hard disks, it will say, NO DISK DETECTED. Insert Floppy into Drive A to continue. At this point, you will change the drive to your current ROM device. You may have to cancel the Floppy drive and instead re-direct the installer to your ROM DRIVE. Take the XP Install Disk OUT and put your Driver DISK in and click OK and XP installer will inspect the driver CD. You will now LOAD all of the drivers you have EXCEPT THE VIDEO driver. You most likely will not be able to run the video driver without first having DirectX and NET FRAMEWORK 2.0 or higher installed! So do not install the specific video driver. Now, load all the OTHER drivers, sata, sound, lan, chipset drivers. After this, XP will detect the SATA devices and you will be able to detect the hard disks and format and then install XP and you should be good to go. Make sure you have your ORIGINAL legal key. When XP is installed, immeditately disconnect from the net, and I mean NOW! Get off line. First, install your security software, your antivirus, your firewall, and your antimalware FIRST! Once you are protected, then reconnect your connector to the net, download updates to all security software. THEN, activate your copy of XP and receive the activation confirmation and you are good to go… Next, go directly to microsoft update and start updating all your files. AFTER Microsoft detects and updates you with Net Framework 2.0 or above, THEN go to Microsoft DirectX home page on the Microsoft site and download the latest version of DirectX, depending on what video card you have. Finally, now that you have direct x (no, windows update will NOT update you with Direct X, you have to download it yourself)…finally install your video driver. AFter all this, you will be home free and able to install all your other software. I would recommend that after the last step, you make several MANUAL RESTORE POINTS, just in case something gets screwed up. This way you can roll back to a virgin copy of XP.