Windows XP; downgrade Pro to Home? Or validate?

[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

[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 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.

[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 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.

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

[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.