Windows XP; downgrade Pro to Home? Or validate?

[pzkpfw]

So my Father in-law gave me his old PC when he bought a new one.

It's got a marginally better CPU than the one my Son already had (1.6 GHz P4 versus 1Ghz Celeron), so I figured I'd set it up for him.

It was such a mess with downloads and stuff, I didn't trust what was on it, so decided to reinstall Windows.

The PC had a valid bought copy of Win XP Home on it - has the little hologram sticker with product key and all that, but, the F-in-law didn't give me his Windows CD's, so I just used a copy of XP Pro I had nearby.

The XP Pro CD didn't accept the XP Home product key (no surprise) so I just used the volume key that came with it. Unfortunately that doesn't validate (probably no surprise either) when trying to install Windows Defender etc.

So:

Can I "downgrade" an XP Pro install so an XP Home product key will work?

[steve_t]

I don't think you can, sorry. If you have an XP Home COA, it's probably easiest to find someone with an XP Home CD and then use your key with that

[Scuba_Steve]

I don't think you can, sorry. If you have an XP Home COA, it's probably easiest to find someone with an XP Home CD and then use your key with that

+1 to that, and aside from that pro would only offer disadvantages to your sons PC, your better off with home anyways

[pzkpfw]

I don't think you can, sorry. If you have an XP Home COA, it's probably easiest to find someone with an XP Home CD and then use your key with that

May take a shovel to the F-in-laws office and see if I can find his disks...



... and aside from that pro would only offer disadvantages to your sons PC, your better off with home anyways

Yeah, agree totally, that's why I was looking to "downgrade" so I could use the valid Home key (rather than asking how to get the dodgy Pro working (though at this stage, I wouldn't object, either).



Would Windows 7 run on a 1.6 Ghz P4...? :-) Might be easier to just buy a fresh copy of Windows (gasp).

[SMOKEU]

Check this out http://www.ubuntu.com

[steve_t]

You could buy this

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Computers/Desktops/No-monitor/auction-354479987.htm

and tell the guy to bin the computer but send you the COA

[SMOKEU]

You could buy this

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Computers/Desktops/No-monitor/auction-354479987.htm

and tell the guy to bin the computer but send you the COA

You can get a Windows 7 COA for free if you know what you're doing.

[mashman]

.snippity

Would an original XP home disc work using your own key... if so I've got one :)

[pzkpfw]

Would an original XP home disc work using your own key... if so I've got one :)

I'd expect so. If I have no luck with the F-in-laws office, I'll propose a "deal"...

[mashman]

I'd expect so. If I have no luck with the F-in-laws office, I'll propose a "deal"...

no need for a deal, i don't use it, tis yours if the hunt doesn't kill ya :yes:

[steve_t]

no need for a deal, i don't use it, tis yours if the hunt doesn't kill ya :yes:

Mashman, you're a legend. What a GC :niceone:

[pzkpfw]

Argh flippity flip. (Substitute favourite unsavoury words here).


Found XP Home disk. (Thanks anyway Mashman - awesome offer.)

But it wouldn't let me reinstall over Pro.

So followed advice here: http://www.computerrepairchorley.co.uk/index.php/archives/3

...to tell Windows that it was XP Home. Which apparently lets the install disk be used to reinstall.

But the XP Home disk I've got, when booted off, seems to die after the "setup is scanning your hardware configuration" bit. The screen goes black, and never comes back.

(I've googled that, and best I can see is it can come from hardware issues. I tried pulling everything but the bare minimum out of the PC, but that didn't help.)

And of course, the install of Pro won't come up any more either, as on start-up it sees the Product ID doesn't match the version that XP has been told it is.

Geez. I've got a real valid version of Windows but can't freakin' use it.


May just need to save up and buy the boy a new PC. Goddamit!

[steve_t]

Nah don't buy a new one, just use the windows disc and format your hard drive

[pzkpfw]

The home disk won't finish booting; I could try the dodgy Pro disk, but might end up back in the same mess - a valid key for Home, but an install of Pro.

[steve_t]

The home disk won't finish booting; I could try the dodgy Pro disk, but might end up back in the same mess - a valid key for Home, but an install of Pro.

Does it not finish booting just with the 'repair' you're trying to do, or also with the clean install after formatting your hard drive?

[pzkpfw]

Does it not finish booting just with the 'repair' you're trying to do, or also with the clean install after formatting your hard drive?

Stick in Windows Home CD.

Turn on.

BIOS does it's thing (laugh at how little RAM there is), then it sees the drive has a CD in it and offers to boot off it if I press a key - so I do.

Then a I get a plain character-based screen, black with white text, with a line at the top that says something like "Set up is verfiying your hardware configuration".

After about two seconds, that text goes away and the screen is black. That's it.


I googled a little, and there seemed to be a few reports of it.

[steve_t]

Try using your xp pro disc to get to the format hdd stage. Allow it to format it. Then reboot and change to the xp home disc and try a new install

[mashman]

Argh flippity flip. (Substitute favourite unsavoury words here).

Found XP Home disk. (Thanks anyway Mashman - awesome offer.)


heh, been there, done that... good luck :innocent:

[SMOKEU]

Phucking MS has stopped my cracked version of X64 7 from working properly! Thieving bastards!

[Buyasta]

Phucking MS has stopped my cracked version of X64 7 from working properly! Thieving bastards!
The answer to that is fairly simple... Don't use a crack.
Seriously, if you want to pirate it, a crack is very much not the way to go, a bootloader that emulates a BIOS with the correct SLIC for an OEM licence key is a damn sight easier and more reliable.
If you were using a bootloader, you should just need to upgrade to the latest version.
Personally, I find this (http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/24901-Current-release-information) one rather good, although naturally you should only use it if you legally own it and simply wish to bypass the copy protection for some legitimate reason. :innocent:

[SMOKEU]

The answer to that is fairly simple... Don't use a crack.
Seriously, if you want to pirate it, a crack is very much not the way to go, a bootloader that emulates a BIOS with the correct SLIC for an OEM licence key is a damn sight easier and more reliable.
If you were using a bootloader, you should just need to upgrade to the latest version.
Personally, I find this (http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/24901-Current-release-information) one rather good, although naturally you should only use it if you legally own it and simply wish to bypass the copy protection for some legitimate reason. :innocent:

I've used a boot loader and it worked mint for months, but MS has deactivated it with their latest updates. No amount of recracking it has worked. I'll try what you said with that boot loader.

[pzkpfw]

What I hate, is that I'm trying to get a legitimate install of Windows working, but all the copy protection makes that hard.



For that matter, my Daughters old laptop died, with a valid/legitimate Windows Vista on it. Can a licence be "tranferred" off one PC to another - or would the pre-installed copy on that HP laptop be OEM-style restricted to just that laptop?

(Not that I'd want Vista on the doggy old PC I'm trying to get going for my Son.)

[Scuba_Steve]

What I hate, is that I'm trying to get a legitimate install of Windows working, but all the copy protection makes that hard.



For that matter, my Daughters old laptop died, with a valid/legitimate Windows Vista on it. Can a licence be "tranferred" off one PC to another - or would the pre-installed copy on that HP laptop be OEM-style restricted to just that laptop?

(Not that I'd want Vista on the doggy old PC I'm trying to get going for my Son.)

Quite often those ones are locked to the (in your case) HP copy of Vista of which that will most likely be locked to HP laptops (most likely that series of laptops too) So effectively it is useless outside of the box it came with.

[mashman]

Quite often those ones are locked to the (in your case) HP copy of Vista of which that will most likely be locked to HP laptops (most likely that series of laptops too) So effectively it is useless outside of the box it came with.

Sometimes that locking is due to the restore partition... remove it and you might be able to rebuild the laptop using what you please :)

[Gremlin]

Alternatively, buy a license, then install a cracked one... easier to work with.

Smokeu, you were probably using the wrong one... there was an update to Windows Activation Technologies a while ago, that if you ignored, it installed anyway after a period of time... that was very interesting to say the least.

[Buyasta]

What I hate, is that I'm trying to get a legitimate install of Windows working, but all the copy protection makes that hard.



For that matter, my Daughters old laptop died, with a valid/legitimate Windows Vista on it. Can a licence be "tranferred" off one PC to another - or would the pre-installed copy on that HP laptop be OEM-style restricted to just that laptop?

(Not that I'd want Vista on the doggy old PC I'm trying to get going for my Son.)

Yup, copy protection is always a lot more detrimental to legitimate owners than pirates - personally I always use a crack or 1:1 image with games I legitimately own, as much of the time the copy protection will still interfere, despite having a legal copy.

The pre-installed copy of windows will be limited to that brand - large OEMs all use SLP - System-Locked Preinstallation, wherein they each have a single OEM cd key that is used on all their systems, but it requires a manufacturer-specific certificate in the BIOS, called the SLIC. So each OEM cdkey will only work if the BIOS has the SLIC for the same manufacturer as the cdkey.

It is possible to emulate the correct SLIC, using the bootloader I posted above, or to find the OEM cdkey for the manufacturer of the computer you then want to install it on, but neither of these would be considered a legitimate copy of windows, and would still be illegal.
It's also worth noting that there have been several different versions of SLP and SLIC thus far, which are not compatible, so if there is too great an age difference between the computers, it is less likely to work.

[SMOKEU]

Yup, copy protection is always a lot more detrimental to legitimate owners than pirates - personally I always use a crack or 1:1 image with games I legitimately own, as much of the time the copy protection will still interfere, despite having a legal copy.

The pre-installed copy of windows will be limited to that brand - large OEMs all use SLP - System-Locked Preinstallation, wherein they each have a single OEM cd key that is used on all their systems, but it requires a manufacturer-specific certificate in the BIOS, called the SLIC. So each OEM cdkey will only work if the BIOS has the SLIC for the same manufacturer as the cdkey.

It is possible to emulate the correct SLIC, using the bootloader I posted above, or to find the OEM cdkey for the manufacturer of the computer you then want to install it on, but neither of these would be considered a legitimate copy of windows, and would still be illegal.
It's also worth noting that there have been several different versions of SLP and SLIC thus far, which are not compatible, so if there is too great an age difference between the computers, it is less likely to work.

I'll just get a genuine key straight from MS for free at some stage. A mate of mine has done it numerous times before, and it's very simple to do.

[pzkpfw]

Geez I was stuck. Neither the Win XP Home nor Pro CD's would boot, and the dodgy (honestly, I just used it because it was SP3 and I figured I'd be able to downgrade to the legit Home license I have) install wouldn't proceed past the login screen.

I even tried an old Win 98 HDD and a Win 98 boot CD I found in my stock of old stuff - but they wouldn't run the PC properly at all.

So I googled some more on the "windows freezes after the hardware sniffing stage" issue. People suggested removing all sorts of hardware and disabling USB mice. I tried all that. Even pulling one of the two DDR RAM sticks.

Then I saw a reference to removing linux partitions. Didn't apply to me, but these talked of Windows getting confused by a bad MBR or something (Master Boot Record?).

So I downloaded this: Hiren's BootCD 13.1

It booted up fine and gave me a command to format the HDD, which I did. (Actually I didn't even let it finish).

Then I re-started with the XP Home CD in the drive - this time it got right past the bit where it was previously freezing, and XP Home (legit) is now installed on the boys PC.

Still need to install the drivers for his wirelss LAN card and a few things, then activate it (hope that still works in this day of XP being "obsolete") but - all good so far.

(Also, the "D:" partition of the HDD has dissapeared, so I have to figure out how to repartition/format whatever. It's 80Gb off the 200Gb HDD, so I do want it back.)


Thanks everyone for the help and advice. Hopefully it's more or less done now.

[steve_t]

Geez I was stuck. Neither the Win XP Home nor Pro CD's would boot, and the dodgy (honestly, I just used it because it was SP3 and I figured I'd be able to downgrade to the legit Home license I have) install wouldn't proceed past the login screen.

I even tried an old Win 98 HDD and a Win 98 boot CD I found in my stock of old stuff - but they wouldn't run the PC properly at all.

So I googled some more on the "windows freezes after the hardware sniffing stage" issue. People suggested removing all sorts of hardware and disabling USB mice. I tried all that. Even pulling one of the two DDR RAM sticks.

Then I saw a reference to removing linux partitions. Didn't apply to me, but these talked of Windows getting confused by a bad MBR or something (Master Boot Record?).

So I downloaded this: Hiren's BootCD 13.1

It booted up fine and gave me a command to format the HDD, which I did. (Actually I didn't even let it finish).

Then I re-started with the XP Home CD in the drive - this time it got right past the bit where it was previously freezing, and XP Home (legit) is now installed on the boys PC.

Still need to install the drivers for his wirelss LAN card and a few things, then activate it (hope that still works in this day of XP being "obsolete") but - all good so far.

(Also, the "D:" partition of the HDD has dissapeared, so I have to figure out how to repartition/format whatever. It's 80Gb off the 200Gb HDD, so I do want it back.)


Thanks everyone for the help and advice. Hopefully it's more or less done now.

Good stuff :niceone:

[Gubb]

After about two seconds, that text goes away and the screen is black. That's it.


I googled a little, and there seemed to be a few reports of it.
I've had a similar issue, and discovered it was because I had the monitor plugged in thruogh DVI rather than VGA. It would work for about 30 seconds, then nothing. After switching to VGA, it worked perfectly.

[pzkpfw]

I've had a similar issue, and discovered it was because I had the monitor plugged in thruogh DVI rather than VGA. It would work for about 30 seconds, then nothing. After switching to VGA, it worked perfectly.

Yep, some of the forum posts I googled up did claim video drivers (or cards) to be at fault, and recommended using "simpler" modes or "simpler" cards during the install.

(
Some people claimed removing USB mice helped. Some people claimed a deep test and replace of RAM fixed it. Some people said taking their DVD-R out helped. Some fiddled with their HDD settings (cable select versus Master/Slave).

In my case blowing away the HDD (a bit) was what fixed it, but pulling out the crappy AGP video card and putting in an even crappier PCI card was going to be the next step.
)

[Gremlin]

right click My Computer, Manage, then go to Disk Management.

You should be able to see the partitions on the disks, ie, your missing space, and create a partition from the unallocated space.

Other thing can be bad optical drives...