My poor old mother had her PC fixed at a local repair shop (I live too far away to help), and the guy installed a pirated copy of XP Pro (trying to help I guess). She only realized this when she tried to use MS Update and it gave her some problems. My questions are: If she purchases a genuine XP Home Upgrade CD (not OEM), will it install over the pirated copy? And if so, will she have to install the pirated copy first everytime if she has to format her hard drive and re-install the ligit XP? Tks!

All she has to do is do a fresh install of xp and she should be good to go. Jim R

You will have to do a fresh install. You cannot install XP Home on top of XP Pro. It is considered a downgrade and cannot be done. If you buy an upgrade disk, you will need a legitimate previous version of Windows to verify your entitlement to the upgrade. Otherwise its a full retail version. Can still be OEM if you buy some other hardware with it, like a mouse. Which begs the question, what was on there in the first place? Stuart

might as well be less troublesome and worth the money to purchase a xp pro license ... then all she has to do is changing the key of the existing installation. Today's subliminal thought is: 'Calm down ... it's only ones and zeros.'

i think mattie is right if she doest know how how to format and all the techie stuff which i think she cant best thing is buy the license from microsoft link below has all info you need, its free to get winxp license but microsoft wants all the info where you got pirated copy thats the condition. http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/do... Dont give up

Thanks for all the input guys! For Stuart: She has a Compaq Presario which she bought from Staples a few years back. It came with XP Home, but only a Recovery CD (which I guess gave the tech guy a hard time so he decided to install the pirated XP Pro). Well, I've decided to go out and buy her an OEM version of XP Home (I'll buy a mouse or a NIC I guess). This'll make things a lot easier (unless I can find my old Win 98 CD soon!).