XP Home vs Professional

[Leeza]

I guess if I really tried I could have gotten it for free, but I just went and paid for the Home upgrade. Bill Gates needs the money you know. The Professional was almost double the price so I didn't think that it was worth it. Windows 2003 might be okay, but I don't think that I want to wait till Fall of 2004 for a new OS and I think that XP will be just fine for what I need.

When I bought Home, they told me that once I installed it I would have 30 days to activate it or Windows would just quit working until I did. They don't care if you don't register, but you have to activate it. Oh well. I could reformat and use the key as many times as I wanted to though. Thanks for the help.

[crono_logical]

Reformatting that often is a hassle

[Dr Unne]

I thought the activation also required online verification, not just the registration. I don't think you can use the key as many times as you like. Unless I'm completely wrong about it.

[crono_logical]

Activation itself requires online verification or a phone call, so MS knows how often that particular copy has been installed. As for the key itself, if you do a clean format each time round, it has no way itself of knowing that it was used already (either on the same PC or elsewhere) so can be used over and over with that particular CD, which is what activation is for to track that instead. I'm not sure if the activation key needed if you reinstall over the same hardware configuration will change since I don't know if the code you need to tell MS to get the activation key is partially randomly generated (since it's partially dependant on the hardware configuration) or not for each install.

[Dr Unne]

So far as I know, it somehow hashes your hardware configuration during install. I don't know what all goes into generating the hash though. It might be semi-random. I don't know if formatting would change the hash. So far as I understand, MS's server keeps track of all the hashes that each install (for each CD) generates, and after a certain max number of hashes (3?) the CD refuses to activate ever again, though if you call MS and beg they may let you. However / whether it works, I don't care, it's a load of crap. If you add RAM, or one of your drives dies and needs to be replaced, Windows may refuse to install. Always nice when companies treat their customers like criminals.

The copy of XP Pro I have doesn't activate at all and doesn't even need a key, so I really have no idea. Yay for Linux anyways.

[Leeza]

Originally posted by crono_logical
Reformatting that often is a hassle

I'd like to just be able to do it once. I installed without formatting first, because the book said that ALL existing files would be deleted, but they weren't. Now it's not letting me reformat. It always says that the volume is in use, even though I closed down all the programs I could see. Could you tell me how to format so that I can get rid of all my old files? It's not necessary, but I really want to start fresh.

[Yamaneko]

Since you got the XP upgrade (right?) and not the full, you're going to have to install ME again and then upgrade to XP.

When I changed my activation key while I was running Windows, I didn't have to use online verification. I just used http://www.labmice.net/WindowsXP/articles/changeID.htm
to change my key.

[Leeza]

I've already converted my files to NTFS so I can't go back FAT32, which is what ME was, I think.

[crono_logical]

It's not letting you format because Windows itself is running on that volume You need to reformat during the installation itself, which may not be possible with an upgrade - although like you said, since WinME can't use NTFS, you can do that full format during WinME's full install instead. Clean install of XP (needs full version) is more stable than an upgrade from a previous version Windows in any case, especially from ME Plus it's faster since converting a FAT32 drive to NTFS causes nice fragmentation - you might want to at least defragment if you don't intend to reinstall again

[Leeza]

It was supposed to reformat itself. It has two ways of installing the upgrade. The <i>Quick upgrade</i> if you want to keep your existing files and the <i>New Installation</i> if you <b>don't</b> want to keep your existing files. There's a warning that says: <i>a new installation deletes all programs or system files from a previous installation.</i> So, I figured that I didn't have to bother to reformat before I installed XP.

I'm going to try and go through the whole installation process again to see if there is maybe something that I missed, but I can't see why it won't let me reformat even if Windows is running. *is not computer smart*

[Dr Unne]

If it let you format while Windows was running, it'd crash in a terrible manner when it was done because all the programs running in memory that expect a hard drive to be there would start doing crazy stuff. You should be able to boot to DOS by hitting F8 while it boots and picked Command Prompt. If that doesn't work, if you have a DOS boot disk somewhere you can use that to boot off a floppy. If you boot from a floppy there'll definitely be nothing to stop you from formatting.

Since you already have it in NTFS form though, you might have trouble, because DOS can't even read NTFS drives. You might have to use fdisk instead and delete the main partition instead of formatting it, then remake a new partition. At work, when people had NTFS drives and wanted to format, we always had trouble. I hope you get it all sorted out.

If you just can't format the thing, the next best thing is to delete all the files manually. From DOS, deltree * might do the trick. Or del * or something. That might miss hidden / system files though. Delete your entire Windows directory and your entire Program Files directory, and since you already installed XP, delete Documents and Settings. Also c:\temp, if it exists, and everything in the c:\ directory itself, and c:\RECYCLER. You should be fine to reinstall then, those are the only places Windwos should put files during install

[Leeza]

Thanks, Brian. That's what I did. I went into bios and set the CDRom to be the first boot device. Then I went through the whole installation process again, but this time I deleted the old partition that had all of the old files on it and created a new one for XP to install on. I found a <i>Step-by-step Guide to Installing Windows XP</i> and it seemed to work. Everything seems to be running smoothly (so far) and my hard drive is totally empty.

[Dr Unne]

Glad to hear it. Luckily you only have to do this once, then you can forget about it.

[Leeza]

Let's hope that's right.