Windows XP Home → Windows XP Pro

A hack to upgrade with­out, ahem, upgrading.

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 :)

24 comments
  1. alex says: Jun 27, 20058:30 am

    win­dows xp pro, will allow me to enter my log on pass­word and then it will start the proc­cess to log on and imme­di­ately log off and go back to ask for my pass­word !again
    Please Help
    thank you , Alex

  2. sniptools says: Jul 08, 20052:28 pm

    Alex, I'm not sure how that is rel­e­vant here but you may wish to take a look at this thread.

  3. Maria e says: Aug 28, 20059:50 am

    Hi,
    I am try­oin to re install win­dows xp, but when iI put the cd and start the instal­la­tion it tells me that it can not con­tinue since I have a newer ver­sion of win­dows Xp, I have tried doin it from the boo menu and it will not allow me either it keeps f1 or f2 and thats it f1 for retry and f2 for setup, I don't know what else to do, i am tru­ing to do this since I have acquired the desk­top hijack and I think instead of going tho­rugh all this process re installing win­dowx would be a safe bet since I have saved all my impor­tant infor­ma­tion, any help is greatly appre­ci­ated, should I cre­ate bootable flop­pies, and if I do how do I cre­ate them?
    Once again than you for your sup­port and coop­er­a­tion in this issue.

    Sin­cerely,

    Mariae

  4. Chuck says: Nov 26, 20051:14 pm

    My proces­sor and mother board crashed. I bought a new case,motherboard & intel proces­sor (had athalon before). Added my dri­ves and tried to start sys­tem and got an acti­vate win­dows xp win­dow but it would not let me reac­ti­vate. I con­tacted microsoft who said my sys­tem has a prob­lem and i had to con­tact ema­chines about the prob­lem. (they had restore disks but I never had a copy of xp other than on the restore disks) Since i no longer have an ema­chine com­puter I don't know where to go. You can tran­fer the
    oper­at­ing sys­tem from one com­puter to another with­out hav­ing to buy it again I hope.

  5. onnewa says: Dec 13, 20056:49 am

    well my other com­puter is not work­ing and i want to use my other tower that i have so i try to install win­dow xp but i only have some of the 25 key code can you help me this is part of the code fdkrdh 78t8g 7whhv i cant see three — - — dj rbh8q please help me

  6. Alan says: Jan 17, 200611:54 pm

    when start­ing win XP pro the log on comes up and i never had this hap­pen before. I dont want to log on or have a pass word. Never did before. Is there a way to get rid of or bypass this log on pro­ce­dure. Help

  7. sniptools says: Jan 18, 20063:20 am

    Alan, down­load TweakUI from the Microsoft site — http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx — and enable the option for Autolo­gin. If you don't want the pass­word to show up after your screen­saver comes on, you can dis­able the pass­word from your screen­saver set­tings (right click on Desk­top –> Prop­er­ties –> Screensaver).

  8. bboopathi says: Jul 11, 20067:17 pm

    i would like to know how to install xp pro with crack gen on a machine leav­ing out all those acti­va­tion to later part.
    Thanks

  9. sue says: Jul 29, 200612:28 am

    I HAVE A FRIEND THAT HAS A OLD COMPUTER AND SHE CANNOT GET ON LINE UNTIL SHE INSTALLS WINDOWS 98 2nd EDITION. HOW DOES SHE GET THIS DISC BEING AS SHE CAN'T GET ONLINE WITHOUT IT? ANYONE?

  10. Chris says: Aug 18, 200611:09 am

    I bought a com­puter from a garage sale but it says the xp pro is coun­ter­feit any­one no how I can fix it free?

  11. lucien says: Aug 24, 20066:14 pm

    Have just built a new computer,install win­dows xp Home & a few other dri­vers to get it up & run­ing, but it was run­ing very slowly. So for­mated c: to rein­stall xp but now i get to EULA (End user Licence Agree­ment) it say Press F8 to accept , but it wont let me ???

  12. Alice Rosado says: Oct 01, 200610:24 pm

    Ok, I got a prob­lem I have clone my new hard drive from the old one and replace it but I want to take the old one and put it to another comp for my daugh­ter cause the other one don't have one. But it freezes up when I try to start it. I see the logo of xp but it start to reboot again. It;s the real xp home. Is there a way to go around that? Oh and another thing I lost my cd please help me.

  13. katy says: Oct 03, 20069:41 pm

    i have lost my win­dows xp home disc and prod­uct key how can i reboot my comp if i have no disc or key is there any way i can use some­one elses dixsc and key ?? if not does any­one know where and how much i can get a gen­uine disc and key for .….

  14. Luke says: Nov 11, 20064:52 am

    it has come to the time i need to for­mat my com­puter i have a alba­comp pc and i have the cd they have sur­plyed me but have lost the cd key to it how do i get the key from the xp disk it is win­dows xp home with SP2 if any one can help pleaseeee pleaseeeee email me i will be truly greatfull

  15. Leilani says: Dec 10, 200612:31 am

    I com­pletly lost oper­at­ing sys­tem. i need to know how can i restore sys­tem with­out havng the orig­i­nal cd. i have burned a copy of win 98se and win98 it doesnt take it.. when i boot up the com­puter it goes to a black screen with miss­ing oper­at­ing sys­tem.. please help…

  16. Blex says: Dec 31, 20069:12 pm

    Can I tran­fer my win­dows Xp to my new PC with­out hav­ing to by a new OS?
    I mean, is it pos­si­ble to can­cel the val­i­da­tion on the old PC and use it on my new PC?
    I do not need to use the old PC any more .
    Thanks.

  17. Tyler says: Jan 03, 20076:46 am

    Hi My name is tyler …
    I Want to rein­stall xp pro but i lost my prod­uct key can any one help please.… email me at tyler.l@quickclic.net if you can

    please no spam or junk thank you

    ** IM RUNNING WINDOWS 2000 PRO

  18. Logan says: Jan 13, 20072:08 am

    Not sure if this is the right spot or not, but it's as closwe as I can find.

    Our net­work here is strictly XP Pro for secu­rity rea­sons. One of our vendor’s machines crashed, and they bought a new one. I tried putting their old hard drive (with all their spe­cial pro­grams and main­frame inter­faces on it) on the new machine and all it does is reboot after com­ing up to the "Start Win­dows Nor­mally" screen. The drive works in another machine OK, but we can't let them use our machines. OK so I tried to do a fresh install of a NEW XP Pro over their new HD OS, which is Win­dows XP MEDIA. It won't take at all. My ques­tion is: Is it pos­si­ble to install XP Pro over XP MEDIA ver­sion. I really don't want to do a disk wipe and install because I won't have any way to install all the onboard dri­vers that comes with their machine.

  19. RICHMOND says: Mar 06, 200712:27 am

    Hello big staff, i have HP Cen­trino lap­top with win­dows xp home edi­tion on it and have tried to for­mat the drive and install new win­dows xp pro­fes­sional BUT after the files are copied it comes back to tell me that i dont have access to the HARD DISK.
    I would be much grate­ful if any­one with best approach could help me with my laptop

  20. pitafalon says: Mar 17, 20076:47 am

    please how do i open regedit ,win­dows says it's been locked by an
    admin­is­tra­tor but i am use­ing the admin­is­tra­tor. And how to open mscon­fig with a sim­i­lar error. One mire prob­lem I have with win­dows or pc is how to clear a net­work or reset it with­out rein­stalling the os.

  21. Tyra says: Apr 22, 20079:11 am

    We are try­ing to refor­mat one of our XP Pro­fes­sional PC's , due to our son not putting the virus pro­tec­tion on it as we had sent to him, this pc is hosed, any­way, we can­not get XP to work, it is giv­ing us bad mem­ory errors and there­fore it won't let us to do the NTFS any ideas on how to get this accomplished.

  22. Roberts says: Aug 09, 20075:45 am

    Hi i had a prob­lem i went out bot win­dows xp and installed it said you have errors ut it works if i push F1 to con­tinue what cause that is the bios error has some­thing set rong. Hey all i had to hit delete to go to bois and set boot floopy cd first and put win­dows xp cd and deleted the par­tion and refor­mat­ted hard drive with xp cd and installed it. If you buy a com­puter off some­one has a pass­word on it in the bois remove the bat­tery that you con go in to bois any­thing else that have leave you mes­sage peo­ple love to know your prob­lems to help you solve it.

  23. bob borum says: Jan 27, 20091:51 pm

    My xp instal­la­tion is fine except that when I push start , I get dell logo then it goes to black screen with boot notice press f1 to con­tinue or f2 for setup . then after I click f1 it opens xp win­dow . it will do this at every start, I was told I had a bad hard drive but I bought a new 40gb hard drive and rein­stalled xp and it does the same thing , any help will be grate­ful this is on a dell gx110sff I have new memory

  24. liz says: Apr 06, 20102:21 am

    its about the file win­dows roor\system32\hal.dll

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