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Is it possible to repair a hard drive with XP Home on it with a CD with XP Pro on it.
Computer was destroyed in flood, but hard drive survived. Put in new hardware but just hangs on boot, figured I need to repair it, original CD has thrown out in clean up after flood, but I have the CD Key from the side of the Tower. I have a XP Pro CD from another PC, will this work.
As you have changed your hardware unless you have replaced the damaged stuff in particular your motherboad with exactly the same chipset etc there is no chance of you using either the home or prof cd.
When windows is installed it installs basic drivers to interface with the motherboard chipset cpu etc ie if you had a via chipset and installed a motherboard with a Nvidia chipset the o/s will not kick into life
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So, am I completely out of luck then?
Sounds like it, if XP is completely dependent on it's initial hardware setup. So only solution is find a copy of XP Home and to a total reinstall, or will the XP Home CD Key work with a XP Pro CD?
Thanks for the quick response.
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MRT is wrong, you CAN move an HDD with Xp on it from one machine to another, but as you say, you need to do the repair install.
Now wether or not it is possible to repair Home with a Pro CD, I don't know...........
I don't suffer from insanity, I embrace it.
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it sounds like you have the pro cd and the key for the home cd
i don't think you will be able to use these together
if you need a key some times you can look up a serials program to get one.
i don't know of specific ones
but i know they are there.
i also think to save your data you need the upgrade version of xp pro to do this.
i have seen it for $158
i didn't shop around.
you might be able to find it cheaper.
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It is possible to fix a home xp install with a pro cd....
Just insert pro cd into drive and at the run prompt type sfc /scannow.
you will no doubt be asked for your home xp cd but keep hitting retry every time it asks you....It should continue to scan your system each time you press retry.
I have done this myself...so I know it works...
BLeeM
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Thanks for all the reponses.
I am definitely going to try to repair Home with a Pro CD tomorrow.
I will post my results.
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Sorry...But I forgot to mention that my last post only works once you are into the operating system..ie..you've booted up into windows home edition.
What I would do in your situation... is keep the drive to one side...buy another drive, say 40gb (cheap enough now)....and install xp pro onto this drive..once installed and working ok..add the old drive as a slave, and retrieve your old data this way..once youve got back everything that you need...use the computer management tool in administrative tools or type compmgmt.msc into the run dialog box (there are other ways to get here..lol), and select Storage>>Disk management.
Here you can manage your installed drives to your hearts content.
Easiest way if you ask me...and less hassle too..
BLeeM
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