XP home/pro help?

OK, this isn't really a security question, but I figured I'd start here. working on a friend's computer who had to replace a hard drive through a warranty service, at which point MicronPC installed XP Home without any means of activation. We tried going through Microsoft, but they've been completely unhelpful. Luckily, I'm a college student and could get XP Pro for under $10, so it's been bought and installed. I don't know how to uninstall Home now, it won't run past the login screen without activation, and I can't find any easy options to simply uninstall it while keeping Pro. It's got to be fairly easy... any help?

Why didn't you just install Pro over Home, now you have two OS's ( still this seems like an pathetic attempt to get us to help you crack the activation) if you do have two OS's, there should be a screen on boot up which lets you select either XP Pro or Home, so there shouldnt really be any problem with HOme if you installed Pro.....just don't use Home anymore......

What I would do is reformat the HD and the just install the Pro copy of XP. Then you are starting fresh with only one operating system and a clean HD.

Or you could just boot from the XP CD and install from there.

K... didn't want to reformat because in the month it took Home to require activation there was enough stuff that she didn't want to lose it. I did install Pro off of the XP cd. Since home was basically disabled without activation, I couldn't install Pro over it. I don't want to crack anything, just to be rid of Home.

if your having problems booting you could use something like knoppix (or another live linux distro) to bot from cd-rom. Then make backups of all stuff dont want to lose - easiest way would be to slave another HD and just copy everything across.

format main HD and do a fresh install of Pro

v_Ln

Here's a little help with doing what v_Ln suggested. If you need it:
http://www.shockfamily.net/cedric/knoppix/

Quote:

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Originally posted here by big_john_83642
K... didn't want to reformat because in the month it took Home to require activation there was enough stuff that she didn't want to lose it. I did install Pro off of the XP cd. Since home was basically disabled without activation, I couldn't install Pro over it. I don't want to crack anything, just to be rid of Home.

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Odds are you did an UPGRADE (which would be the action suggested by the OS). If this is true, boot from the CD again and do a FULL INSTALL which should overwrite any pre-existing data from the XP Home installation and solve your activation issue. You'll probably lose her **** but that's the price you pay...at least she'll be able to use the box. That beats the situation as it is now.

Or even insert a Win98 Boot disk, set the Bios to boot from floppy, then boot the box up and choose command prompt, then format c:
Once that's done simply set the bios back to boot from Cd and boot it from the XP Pro Cd problem solved..


Fr0nTy