General Discussion

Alright yall, heres my problem.

    I have a windows disc which is the home edition. I have a product key. I have a hardrive with windows xp pro edition on it. the ONLY reason why im needing windows xp on my PC is to install it on my new mother board so it reads my damn hard drive. can i do this??? will it work?? my hard drive contains windows xp pro. its not the original product key though is this bad?? looking for help! so i will recap.

Have windows xp pro edition on my hard drive.

Need to reinstall windows because of my mother board.

i HAVE a windows xp home edition with a completely different code.

will this work to help solve my problem? i just want to get on my PC to play some games. need help!! AHHH! im going freaking bonkers!  

i think i posted this in the wrong area. O.o

probably not since u have pro version yet have a home edition cd with product code. what is the issue? are u installing a second harddrive? is this harddrive going to act as the main OS HD? what type of HD is it? ive had a SATA harddrive and a motherboard (MSI) in which i had to use a floppy to install SATA drivers into the computer in order for it to recognize the harddrive. you could have a similar situation. look up your motherboard manual (go to the motherboard manufacturer website for it) and see what u need to do in order to install new Harddrives.

i dont think home and Pro have the same drivers avialable. perhaps the base drivers but not all of them possibly, though i could be wrong.

Originally posted by nakuma

probably not since u have pro version yet have a home edition cd with product code. what is the issue? are u installing a second harddrive? is this harddrive going to act as the main OS HD? what type of HD is it? ive had a SATA harddrive and a motherboard (MSI) in which i had to use a floppy to install SATA drivers into the computer in order for it to recognize the harddrive. you could have a similar situation. look up your motherboard manual (go to the motherboard manufacturer website for it) and see what u need to do in order to install new Harddrives.

i dont think home and Pro have the same drivers avialable. perhaps the base drivers but not all of them possibly, though i could be wrong.

well, see i just got a new mother board and hooked all of my old parts up to it. and it keeps on rebooting windows over and over again. My buddy told me i was needing to reinstall windows xp, which it shouldnt be to hard. i really do not know what to do in this case, never have had this problem. *Shrugs* my mother board is an " ELite group" ECS and im running an 80 gig hard drive. here is a link to my mother board.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135082

*sigh* i just want to play : / and my head is killing me from work.

When you install a New OS, you first have to format and completely wipe the drive.  So what I would do first is hook the drive up to another machine to take out those files you want to keep.  (Note:Most if not all applications you will need to re-install with the OS since they have driver related issues otherwise).  This should be possible because if it boots from another machine it boots from the primary drive, and the other drive is readable since it is formatted in NTSC.

Once backing up your important data is done.  You hook your hard drive back up, boot up and open the boot menu.  The screen will tell you which button on boot.  It usually is F8 or F2.  Open your DVD/CD tray and insert the disk.  Then choose to boot from your DVD/CD drive.  It will then ask you if you want to boot from CD press anykey.  It will switch to a new screen and it will take some time to load the files from the CD to memory.  Also during this process if you want to setup RAID you press F3. 

Once this is done it will ask you what you would like to do.  Install a fresh copy of windows, Repair an Old Copy, or Cancel.  Don't choose repair, it will merely take you to a DOS prompt in which its hard to work from.  Choose the install a new copy. 

It will then display partitions you can install on as well as an option to wipe a drive.  You would need to first wipe your 80GB HD by scrolling to the NTSC Partition related to it and pressing the key related to the delete option.  Naturally, it will ask for comfirmation then procede to wipe the drive.   You will also need to wipe any additional partitions on that drive.  When done whiping you should have 1 partition on the drive called unallocated that should be relatively close to 80GB.

Next choose to install or format that drive.  For the Format type I would recommend NTSC over NTSC Fast.  After its done formatting it will immediately progress to installing the OS.  From here on out it is pretty straightforward.  Choose your language, time, enter your key, and input your internet settings. 

After this is done comes the long part, installing updates.  Luckily SP3 is a cumulative update and should be installed ASAP after drivers that came with your motherboard.  After that just use Microsoft/Windows Updater and install all the updates available.

Originally posted by Cleffy

When you install a New OS, you first have to format and completely wipe the drive.  So what I would do first is hook the drive up to another machine to take out those files you want to keep.  (Note:Most if not all applications you will need to re-install with the OS since they have driver related issues otherwise).  This should be possible because if it boots from another machine it boots from the primary drive, and the other drive is readable since it is formatted in NTSC.

Once backing up your important data is done.  You hook your hard drive back up, boot up and open the boot menu.  The screen will tell you which button on boot.  It usually is F8 or F2.  Open your DVD/CD tray and insert the disk.  Then choose to boot from your DVD/CD drive.  It will then ask you if you want to boot from CD press anykey.  It will switch to a new screen and it will take some time to load the files from the CD to memory.  Also during this process if you want to setup RAID you press F3. 

Once this is done it will ask you what you would like to do.  Install a fresh copy of windows, Repair an Old Copy, or Cancel.  Don't choose repair, it will merely take you to a DOS prompt in which its hard to work from.  Choose the install a new copy. 

It will then display partitions you can install on as well as an option to wipe a drive.  You would need to first wipe your 80GB HD by scrolling to the NTSC Partition related to it and pressing the key related to the delete option.  Naturally, it will ask for comfirmation then procede to wipe the drive.   You will also need to wipe any additional partitions on that drive.  When done whiping you should have 1 partition on the drive called unallocated that should be relatively close to 80GB.

Next choose to install or format that drive.  For the Format type I would recommend NTSC over NTSC Fast.  After its done formatting it will immediately progress to installing the OS.  From here on out it is pretty straightforward.  Choose your language, time, enter your key, and input your internet settings. 

After this is done comes the long part, installing updates.  Luckily SP3 is a cumulative update and should be installed ASAP after drivers that came with your motherboard.  After that just use Microsoft/Windows Updater and install all the updates available.

i know how to do all that. the problem im haveing is i have a home edition of windows xp, i use pro edition. the hard drive should be fine and ready to go. i have a completely different product key. can it work?

The product key from the Home Edition CD will not work on the Pro Edition.  This is because the key is written to the specific OS.  That OS also writes itself to the motherboard to prevent installing it on multiple systems.  You would need to wipe the pro edition and install the home edition to use that key.

If you are talking about having the CD-Key that came with your Pro Edition, but don't have the Pro Edition CD to re-install.  Using the Home Edition to repair also will not work with the Pro-Edition CD-Key.

You will need to re-install windows for it to be recognized by the new motherboard since OS is motherboard dependant.  You can replace every part in your system, but if you have the same motherboard its fine for the OS in OEM versions.  If you change the motherboard, you need a new OS if its an OEM version.  If you have a Retail version you can install it up to I think 3 times before its key no longer works regardless of internal components.

You do NOT need to wipe your HD, and XP does NOT write to the motherboard at all. So long as your copy of XP Home isn't an upgrade you can install straight over the top of your XP Pro and get it all working.

Else you could attempt to repair your XP Pro install for the new MB. If you are able to boot to safe mode that is.