lavenderblue Posted September 26, 2007 Report Share Posted September 26, 2007 Can anyone please help? My Son bought a laptop which had xp pro installed on it, works fine but... he prefers xp home and to be honest, although he had been jogging along okay using it, I would prefer a clean install, as every now and again old stuff will appear from the previous owner, an example of this would be .... I now have all the previous owners log in details to their security settings. I was updating my Sons McAfee and suddenly it logged me into the previous owners account, giving me their full details! including password and address. How do I uninstall xp pro and install xp home. I have a disc already for Home edition with the number etc, as we purchased it to put into another pc for my other son to use (that one was running 98) . Ive tried it on the laptop but I get a message saying I cannot put Home edition over Pro (words to that effect). I tried it by shutting down and rebooting with the xp home disc in the drive and it wont do it, it just gives the message as before. Im guessing that I need to uninstall xp pro and start afresh withxp home , I dont know how to uninstall xp pro so any help and advice would be really appreciated on how to achieve what I want to do. gahhhh its posted this a hundred times - mods please help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snow Posted September 26, 2007 Report Share Posted September 26, 2007 Well the quick answer is - you can't replace pro with home as microsoft think home is an inferior operating system (and the truth is theres actually very little difference between the 2 anyway). Now there IS a way to do it but that would involve completely reformatting the hard drive and thus you'd lose everything on it, all programs and data etc. if you haven't got much on there and its easily backed up to another drive then you could probably do it but not knowing what programs you have and whether they are linked to windows it is probably not a good idea to go that route just to solve the issues you are having. There IS a way IF the xp pro was an upgrade from a previous windows system - but even that can be problematic (instructions are on microsofts website) you'd need to essentially go back to the old system then upgrade again with the home disk but personally I wouldn't be doing that unless the whole operating system was corrupt. Asside from the password issues what else is happening that makes him not feel as comfortable with it as home? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lavenderblue Posted September 26, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 26, 2007 Thanks for your reply He likes the tabbed browsing that appears with Home, Im not sure if this is something that can be set up - I soooo not techy its untrue, Im not sure that the tabbed browsing was with Home or upgrading IE to be honest. I cant personally see much difference between the two, I cant see what pro offers that is an upgrade on Home, as I said Im not techy. My main worry is the security issue of secondhand pc, I keep worrying about key loggers etc LOL paranoid, which is why Id perfer to wipe and start anew. Although I guess the previous owner cant of been too techy either to leave personal info on the laptop. I had to delete lots of files and docs. The laptop runs quite slowly even though there is very little on there. He hasnt really saved anything on there, as he has used our main pc for important stuff, just in case the laptop suddenly went into meltdown LOL. What are the chances of a secondhand pc/laptop being unsecure for the new user as regards to internet banking/shopping etc? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lavenderblue Posted September 26, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 26, 2007 Just to add, that the laptop was running IE6 and Im updating to IE7 (as I seem to remember the tabbed browsing being something to do with this) but according to MS my xp pro isnt validated and is hooky Does that now mean I cant update etc? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lavenderblue Posted September 26, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 26, 2007 poop - aparently I cant update ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snow Posted September 26, 2007 Report Share Posted September 26, 2007 Tabbed browsing is IE7 so unconnected to the operating system hmmm if the pro is unvalidated then basically the guy used an unlicensed copy when he installed it and that will affect you being able to get some of the patches and updates. Yes in theory the guy could have left a keylogger behind - more likely tho he installed pro over and older version and thats whats causing the slowness etc - tho it's also possible that theres other conflicts too, have a look on microsoft about rolling back to a previous operating system and see if you have that option. I haven't upgraded to IE7 myself (nor will I until they make me lol) but it should be available as a stand alone download rather than an update. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lavenderblue Posted September 27, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 27, 2007 Thanks Snow, Ive tried to install IE7 for him, but after downloading, I get an error message saying its not supported by my OS. So gawd knows! I will have a look a MS website today to see about rolling back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snow Posted September 27, 2007 Report Share Posted September 27, 2007 Have a look on these 2 links: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;EN-US;303661 thats the microsoft one with instructions on rolling back but before trying that have a look here: http://www.windowsreinstall.com/ it's a site dedicated to reinstalling windows I havent really looked thru it myself yet to see if it answers your specific question - all the geek sites I use say your only options are rolling back or reformatting but it's worth a look before you go that route. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lavenderblue Posted October 24, 2007 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2007 Ive finally managed it!! I gave up after finding out that xp pro was the only thing installed and there was nothing to roll back to - but...... We were so fed up with it, and not being able to update anything because the installed copy of XP pro was hooky that I decided to just try stuff and see. In the end I stuck in the Home Edition disc, rebooted from cd, and when it gave option of different partitions, I deleted the existing partition first, which luckily totally wiped xp pro (it was trial and error because I had no idea) I then installed xp home as a complete new install. It works! Yay No nasty xp pro - Ive updated his IE to 7 , so he now has his tabs, and we can update when needed. Phew! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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