Clean Reinstallation of XP Pro

[DJPrestige]

Hey guys,

First off, I just wanna say that this is the most amazing website ever! I had a problem, and in no more than 2 hrs I received great and outstanding help! Anyways, my computer is currently in a perpetual restarting mode - I turn on the computer, it brings me to a screen that says the computer has not been shut down properly, and then it gives me various options on how to boot up (safe mode/last good known boot/normally, etc) - no matter which option I choose, the computer starts to load up, flashes a blue screen, and then restarts itself! Needless to say, I have given up on trying to fix the problem - I have just decided to reinstall XP on my machine (following the directions on Microsoft's site on how to do a "clean reinstallation" of XP) - now, the only problem is, is that I was previously running XP Pro, and I can only find XP Home edition in my house! Will this cause me any more problems? I just plan to insert the cd, have the computer boot from the cd, and then choose "install XP" from the menu it gives me! Is that all I have to do? Will I still have all my documents and such (especially from the "My Documents" folder on my previous desktop!?!)? Thanks guys in advance for your help again!

Chris

 

[bcastner]

It is not going to work. When you enter in the CD key as one of the first steps it will stop saying that the PID or product ID for the existing installation does not match the PID of the upgrade you plan.

You would need to reformat, outside of XP, the hard disk drives to do what you plan, which of course would make you lose everything.

 

[wolluf]

If you install on top of existing XP pro installation (without repartitioning/reformatting), you should be ok (install will wipe the \windows folder, unless you choose to install elsewhere - eg \windows2, as a 'parallel' installation). I think existing profile folders in Documents and Settings will be left intact (except system ones - Default User and All Users), but if you can backup your My Documents beforehand, it would be a good idea (eg, slave drive in another machine if you have one. If filestore is fat32, you could boot from win98 boot floppy and copy off to floppy - if not too big. If filestore ntfs, same idea, but you'll need something like

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/NTFSDOS.shtml

to allow access to ntfs from dos).
HTH