Upgrading to Windows XP Pro from XP Home

supermonkey

I am trying to upgrade from windows xp home to xp pro but I am being told that the version of xp pro i am trying to install is older than the version of xp home on the pc.

thing is that it is a french pc and xp pro will let me have english as the language and french as the keyboard and xp home won't

it is annoying because i opened a sealed copy of xp pro so the whole process is totally legit

Capt'n Midnight

it's a service pack thing , someone may have more info

you could slipstream SP3 into the PRO install
I doubt you could uninstall the SP on the home install but only worth considerering if the home is SP2 and you feel lucky

supermonkey

I don't know what slipstream means.
Could I copy all my documents to an external hard drive and do a fresh install?

How would I do that?

Fysh

Moving between different versions of XP isn't great because AFAIR you either have to resort to some really stupid registry hacks to make a repair install work (this is a terrible idea btw) or run an in-place upgrade, and neither of those methods have a good track record for creating stable systems.

Your best bet is to use the File & Settings Transfer Wizard to create a migration file for each account on the system, back up any data that you want to hold onto, then do a clean install.

Google nlite if you want to incorporate Service Packs and drivers into a new updated version of your installation media - there should be plenty of good tutorials on how to use it out there.

Capt'n Midnight

Like I said , if you feel lucky, clean install is always best

it's a pity there wasn't a way to apply foreign language service packs like you could with earlier versions of windows, you got a mix of languages but better than nothing

what apps do you have as you will have to reinstall them , and you will need serial numbers and media


Don't forget that changing Xp to english won't change things like Office

JonathanAnon

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Like I said , if you feel lucky, clean install is always best

+1
This is the best option, upgrades usually leave a legacy of issues / errors, and any problems you have can be difficult to sort out. But you need to be sure that you have all the CDs for reinstalling your applications, and have backups of all your data .

supermonkey

Right that's the plan.
Will report back!

Capt'n Midnight

slipstream

copy all the files on the XP CD to C:\i386
download service pack 3 from microsofts site
and extract all it's files
inside is a file called setup.exe

at the command line it's something like this

c:\sp3\sp3.exe /integrate:c:\i386


this means the files in the i386 folder are now service pack 3 and so should install , one hopes

supermonkey

Well I didn't do it the cool way that Capn Midnight suggested.
I reinstalled the operating system and put on the service packs.

Only problem is that I have lost my USB drivers grrr.
It is an Amilo D7830 and I can't find them anywhere!
Would the french version have a special USB driver?

Fysh

USB2 is natively supported in XP, you shouldn't need any additional drivers for USB ports alone to work. However, if you haven't installed the drivers for your chipset, this may be causing problems. Go to the Fujitsu Siemens download page, type in "Amilo D7830" (they don't let you link directly to a given model's downloads, annoyingly) and download all the drivers for your system. You can also check if there are any BIOS updates, if you want to be thorough about it.

supermonkey

OK Cool so it is the chipset that I need to update and should I do the Bios as well.

If I enter D7830 into:
http://ts.fujitsu.com/support/downloads.html

There are a number of options. One of them is chipset. Sorry to be so lame but I was actually looking for USB.

Is it a good idea to do them all on general principles?

Thanks for all help.

Fysh

It's a good idea to do all the drivers - the chipset drivers in particular will make sure that your USB ports operate correctly. Windows Update (and Microsoft Update if you use it) is reasonable at finding drivers if you've got hardware whose natively-supported drivers are ancient, but it's always a good idea to use what your hardware vendor suggests.

As for the BIOS update, it depends. I'm generally of the mind that if you're on a low BIOS version (eg rev A00-A03) it's worth checking for the latest version and installing it if the fixes are useful. But on the other hand, if flashing your BIOS goes wrong it's a total pig to fix, so you should make the decision based on what advantages you'll get from the latest BIOS - if there's no significant difference, there's not that much point in doing so.

supermonkey

I am just going to do the chipset.
Thanks alot and will report back.

Fysh

supermonkey wrote: »

I am just going to do the chipset.
Thanks alot and will report back.

Once you've done the chipset it's a good idea to do the graphics driver as well - you may get additional functionality like a wider range of supported resolutions by doing so.