Own Microsoft Windows XP Home but would like to own Windows XP Pro? Gizmodo is running a simple hack that apparently upgrades the system inadvertently.

No point duplicating it. Read it at Gizmodo.

YMMV, and of course, I do not endorse bootlegging. Enjoy

So you want to use Grisoft's AVG Free as your antivirus, but had Norton antivirus installed before, which is now proving more persistent than a flatulent release in a bath, with Symantec's whole convoluted shebang only compounding your woes? Well below is a simple sureshot way to get rid of Norton for good.

1. First, from Start –> Cpanel –> Add/Remove programs, remove every trace of Norton and its associated programs, which means scan through the list of installed programs for any item that says "Norton" or "Symantec" or "LiveUpdate" — for example "Symantec LiveUpdate" or "Norton AntiVirus 2003".
2. When you are absolutely sure that these vermins are gone, it is VITAL that you reboot the computer. When you are back into XP, delete the following folders manually — if they don't exist that's fine:

   	c:\Program Files\Symantec AntiVirus
   	c:\Program Files\Norton
   	c:\Program Files\Symantec
   	c:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared
   	

   Do a SHIFT DELETE if possible, the folders don't go into your Recycle Bin in that case, so they are gone from your computer for sure.

3. After the above, I usually clean the Windows Registry for any entries that are lying around stray. Get a Registry Cleaner like HoverDesk's RegSeeker (zipped download) and use the "Clean the Registry" option.
4. Once that is done and you have SELECTED ALL and deleted the stray items, reboot again. To be sure.
5. Norton should be gone when your machine is back up. If not, Symantec has a brute force utility called RNAV2003 — get it here, which ought to do the rest of the scavenging, but it shouldn't come to that.

UPDATED: You need your Windows XP or Microsoft Office product key, but you have lost them. Well no fear:

Just download it, run it, and it sees more than you will ever want to know about your system.

Older Recommendations

Some neat utilities to help you find stuff about your system:

Good thing about these tools is they also find a lot of other details about your system.

In a first for the industry behemoth, Microsoft has donated its Windows Installer XML (WiX) to SourceForge.net, the open source developer network.

WiX is a toolset that uses XML code to build Windows installation packages. The toolset supports a command line environment that developers may integrate into their build processes to build MSI and MSM setup packages. It includes a compiler, a lib tool, a linker and a decompiler.

According to a blog posting by Microsoft employee Rob Mensching, "The WiX toolset and all of its source code has been released so that you can build Windows Installer databases (MSI and MSM files) the same way most groups inside Microsoft do.

However, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. WiX became the first project from Microsoft to be released under an OSS approved license, namely the Common Public License."

Explaining the reason for the current release of WiX, Menshing said, "Back in 1999 and 2000, I did not feel that many people inside Microsoft understood what the Open Source community was really about and I wanted to improve that understanding by providing an example.…Via WiX on SourceForge, you get to see the results of many people's efforts to improve Microsoft from the inside out. I'm not exactly sure what is going to happen next but I'm sure there are quite a few people who are interested to see where this leads. Personally, all I hope is that if you find the WiX toolset useful then you'll join the community and help us improve the toolset."

More information about the toolset and its OSS release can be found at: