Computer people: XP Home to XP Pro possible?

[wellstone_democrat]

I'm getting a new laptop and it comes with XP Home but I'm used to and want XP professional for a variety of reasons related to work---I have XP Pro on my work desktop, can I replace the "Home" version with the Pro on my new notebook in any way?

Help!

[Guy Fawkes]

1. the home sp2 update....

makes it pretty much into XP Pro.

[KitchenWitch]

3. Question:

I have XP Home SP2 on my laptop...What is missing from Pro at SP2?

(I have been thinking about upgrading to pro...but not sure if I can justify the expense).

[Guy Fawkes]

4. It isn't worth it, unless...

you can get XP Pro from a local college for $5...

If you're not doing major tweaking and dev work, there isn't anything important missing. If you need things like .Net framework, you can just download them for xp home.

[KitchenWitch]

5. Thanks

I will not spend the money then.

[wellstone_democrat]

6. Actually, I can but

the untrained computer illiterate guy at that campus store didn't know what you could or could not do with it---typical here

So, I can get the program, I just wasn't sure if I could overwrite, upgrade, whatever. I just want both running on the same OS.

[noahmijo]

2. Yea it's possible (Read more to see the major differences)

Just make sure you got at least 512 megs of Ram running under the hood. The primary reason why you would want to update to Pro is for its ability to connect to a domain and remote desktop though, and its ability to encrypt folders.

If you're not doing either of those it really isn't worth it.

[wellstone_democrat]

8. thanks, that is one of the primary things I need to do

and IT has hired so many untrained people who read out of manuals like HP service staff that finding out anything is useless locally. Thanks all very much for your replies. Very useful.

[CatholicEdHead]

9. Remote Desktop comes with SP1 and SP2 for both Home and Pro

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/tools/rdclientdl.mspx

Otherwise you just download it for earlier versions.

[abbeyco]

7. It's possible and very easy

I purchased the upgrade for about $99 (sometimes it's available at Costco). Applying the upgrade will handle all files and documents that currently exist in your file system.

I've done it for a desktop and notebook and both were a piece of cake to do, took about 30 minutes total and I recommend it if you're ever going to run anything (like Oracle) which needs stronger security in the OS.

Good luck!

[TrogL]

10. Take it out and shoot it

A friend of mine just bought a new computer with XP on it and I was the one who ended up setting it up.

It's been two days and it's still not working right.

I could have installed Windows 2000 in two hours and Linux in even less.

[miss_kitty]

11. I spent christmas eve and christmas day 2003 reformatting mine.

turns out there's a bad prompt and if you "hit any key to continue" at that point, instead of letting the timer run down, you end up with some fucked (or should I say MORE fucked) version of it.