XP upgrade from XP home edition

[karenfield]

Hi
am planning an upgrade to XP Pro and researching posts for advice.
My laptop has oem installed xp home - I don't have the original CD. I noticed one post answer said you are notified to install original CD even when doing an 'upgrade'. Should I create this from Backup?? Any advice would be appreciated. thanks.

 

[linney]

What does your OEM support say about upgrading to Pro?

If it was retail home to retail pro you would require a qualifying product CD (could be Windows. 98, 98se, ME or XP Home).

Not sure about OEM's as they do things a bit different, what with hidden recovery partitions, recovery disks, etc.

Your OEM might even have OEM Pro upgrade available. Like I said it gets a bit murky with OEM products.

 

[bcastner]

Even if it asks for a qualifying product, which as Linney says is an unknown quantity, (mine did not for Dell OEM Home to XP Pro Retail), you can use any qualifying product. If you have an old CD of Win 95 or Win 98 they will work fine.

 

[karenfield]

OEM support initial feedback not helpful and vague comments
about invalidating warranty. However I do have WIN98 CD from desktop PC so that should be ok.
Thanks for advice.

 

[bcastner]

You might want to make a list from Device Manager of all of your odd things requiring special drivers: USB devices, sound cards, graphics board, etc.

One easy way to do this is to use either of these utilities:

The Belarc Advisor:

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

Also excellent, AIDA System Analyzer:

http://www.aida32.hu/aida32.php

 

[karenfield]

Yes _ I've come across the Aida utility from this site - really good.
Thanks for help.