Loading XP Pro to OEM machine using XP Home

[Michael Carter]

I have the certified and authentic XP Pro installation disc that my son used to load the computer he built for me several years ago.

If I wanted to use this disc to load the Pro version to an OEM computer, this Acer I'm currently on, could that be done?

Would there be any problems with rejection by the BIOS or CPU? I'm afraid it may search for the original installation/backup disc that came with this system and not want to load the Pro version.

Edited to add, I'm mainly concerned about buying a new system and not finding one with any version of XP available. Just wondering if I can 'upgrade' from Vista to XP Pro.

[airbus319]

Hi Michael,

If the disk is a genuine copy of windows (non oem) then it should pretty much install on any computer.

One thing that you may have to do though is get a driver disk for any Sata hard drive that you may want to use and press f6 at the appropriate point of the install.

If you are installing onto a clean hard disk then I would just boot from the cd and let it run it's course, youll soon know if it needs the sata driver as it will fail the first time saying that no media is available to install windows

regards,

David.

[Rodney]

Should not be an issue. Do yourself a favor and look at your hardware in Device manager for items that may not show up after the first boot. Find out what motherboard it is and go to the manf web site and get XP updates. Usually some folks have trouble doing what you want on Dells Compaq & HP's.

[Michael Carter]

Thanks for the replies.

It is a genuine certified XP Pro disc.