XP Professional or XP Home?

[G0AOZ]

Acer Aspire One suffered a complete hard disk drive failure. A majority of the printing on the Microsoft COA label on the bottom of this netbook has worn off, although I have managed to decipher the 25-digit product code. User tells me it's XP but doesn't know if it's Pro or Home.

Other than flipping a coin and trying a fresh install on the new hard drive, is there any way to tell from the product key which one it is?

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[papadba]

Find the link to Help and Support Center. Click the link. Look near the top-right of the window.

 

[vacunita]

What part of

complete hard disk drive failure

did you miss?

He's trying to identify the CD key type from the label because he has no access to the windows installation.

Now since its a Netbook, my money is on Home. Unless someone installed a Pro on it after the fact, most netbooks that use XP, use XP Home.

I don't think there's a way to tell or sure though. may be a difference in the keys



----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.

http://behindtheweb.blogspot.com/

 

[BadBigBen]

G0AOZ,

afik, no you can't discern one or the other, from the key (COA)...

what you could do though, look at the manufacturers website and see what the laptop was shipped with, or through a GOOGLE search...



Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[edfair]

It gets more complicated than that.

Because MS changed the way they coded the CD keys you might have to try loading 4 or 5 different versions before you hit the right one. A key for an original version won't work on a version released at a service pack level and the service pack levels are also incompatible as are the differences between home and pro.

Once you get it figured out you might want to note on the hard drive itself the key code and version plus service pack level required for reload.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[G0AOZ]

Thanks guys...

My initial thought was the same as yours Phil, more likely to be Home. The support website quotes, XP Home, XP Pro, XP Pro-64, and Vista. I had a feeling it was probably not possible to work out the version from the code, but thought I'd ask just in case someone had discovered a way to do it!

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[Sympology]

Some guides

http://www.technibble.com/how-to-tell-what-type-of-windows-xp-cd-or-license-key-you-have/

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/...icensing-full-or-upgrade-license-for-windows/

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[mscallisto]

If you contact the manufacturer with the serial number of the netbook they may be able to supply you with a BOM (Bill Of Materials) used to manufacture that unique netbook.

This info is usually kept by the manufacturer for "product recall" purposes and other stuff.

The BOM should contain all the hardware and software info used for the original build.

Good Luck

sam

 

[goombawaho]

A key for an original version won't work on a version released at a service pack level and the service pack levels are also incompatible"

I'm not going to agree with this if I understand what you're saying. It's been my experience that a very old XP computer (with a COA sticker) with Windows XP no SP or SP1 can be installed again using an XP SP3 CD with no problem.

 

[edfair]

It's been my experience that a very old XP computer (with a COA sticker) with Windows XP no SP or SP1 can be installed again using an XP SP3 CD with no problem."

It is quite possible that I have not hit on the same circumstances. To SP2 I am certain, from several experiences.



Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[Sympology]

However, you will need an OEM version of the software.

It's almost certainly going to be OEM and not VLK or retail.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[smah]

My guess would be the 'Starter' edition, not Home.

 

[papadba]

What part of
"complete hard disk drive failure"
did you miss?

Pretty much all of it. . .

 

[vacunita]

Pretty much all of it. .

No prob.

@smah, Wasn't Starter edition only available in certain coutries like Turkey, Indoesia, and some central American countries etc...?

However thinking about it, it could possibly be a Media Center Version though its unlikely.



----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.

http://behindtheweb.blogspot.com/

 

[G0AOZ]

RESULT! Whilst awaiting the arrival of a replacement hard drive, out of curiosity I stuck the failed drive in the freezer for a short time. It subsequently spun up and worked sufficiently for me to make an image of the PQSERVICE partition, although the main NTFS partition had gone, and was full of bad, unreadable blocks. Put the saved image onto a temporary workshop drive, ran the Recovery programme, and machine is now up and running XP Home at manufacturer's default settings.

Thanks for input from everyone.


ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[vacunita]

Congrats. The freezer trick. The last resort in data recovery. You can now make a nice bookend or doorstop form the drive.

I had a couple of mine encased in acrylic and use them as bookends. They are quite the conversation piece.

----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.

http://behindtheweb.blogspot.com/

 

[smah]

vacunita, K, N, & KN versions are the country specific versions that I'm aware of, but it's possible that 'xp starter' was another. All the current netbooks that I've seen have Win7 starter, so I suspected that netbook OS of choice back then would have been XP starter.

 

[vacunita]

As far as I knew XP Starter was limited to certain countries only. Netbooks purchased in North America, and most parts of Europe would have been shipped with XP Home at the time. As there was no actual XP Starter Edition for those regions.

Windows XP Starter back then, was nothing more than a neutered XP Home, with Locale specific inputs and wallpapers; that was limited to running only 3 applications at the same time. It was not meant as an actual low end Oerating system at the time, but rather an Introductory OS for 3rd world countries, according to the Wikipedia Article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_Starter_Edition#Starter_Edition

Its only with Windows 7 that the starter version is a regular release. Mostly included with the lower end Pc's that feature all-in-one case. Or iMac-like setups with all all components in the screen constructions but that have low resources. Mostly 1Gb Ram and low single core processors which applies to Netbooks for the most part.


----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.

http://behindtheweb.blogspot.com/

 

[tcsbiz]

I have an Acer One and it came with XP Home. I bought it when they first came out. I had no choice at that time.