Maximum PC

Not sure if this should be posted here or in the Free Clinic, so I thought I'd try here first. Sorry if this is the wrong forum.

My daughter bought a used Dell 620 laptop with XP pre-installed. When we got it, we found it had XP Home with SP3. I tried to upgrade it to XP Pro, but my XP Pro CD only has SP2, so Windows won't let me upgrade from the CD.

Is there a way to uninstall SP3 so that my upgrade CD will worK. If not is there some work-around to get it done.

I know I can just wipe the disk and install XP Pro and then install SP3, all the updates, chipset drivers, etc., but I'm just looking for a simpler and faster solution.

Thanks,
Steve

The wipe/reinstall method will be the fastest. You would probably also have to uninstall SP2 to get your method to work, and if it was originally installed from an SP2/SP3 disk, you would be out of luck.

If SP3 was not a part of the original install (i.e. it was added as an update later) you should be able to remove through add/remove programs under the updates section. If you can't do that, try using nLite. nLite will allow you to include SP3 into the XP Pro install disc (you'll end up burning another copy of the install disc at the end). I don't know how well these will work, but they should give you a place to start from.

When I open Add/Remove Programs, and then check Show Updates, I can't find anything relating to SP3, so I guess when they imaged the laptop before reselling it, SP3 was part of the install.

I'm going to check out nLite now. Will let you know how it goes.

Thanks,
Steve

Wait a sec...what need do you have to upgrade to pro? Admittedly, there may be no advantage to doing this?

To answer your question, you could make your own disk using nlite and add sp3, although in the end, I'm not sure you'll accomplish what you're looking to do.

Sorry for the delay in responding...got a little busy.

Furball146 - I don't really recall the differences between XP Home and Pro, but since my daughter needs to use this laptop for remote access to her work computer, as well as personal e-mail and web surfing, I just thought that Pro might be a better fit for her. Since I already own a legal copy of XP Pro that I can legally install on her laptop, I figured why not. Don't really know what I actually gained for her.

mag - I found nLite XP and used it to create an XP Pro SP3 install. Worked great and the system shows it's running XP Pro with SP3. Had to do a little searching to find an instruction on how to do it, but other than that, no big deal.

One oddity though. When the upgrade finished the hard drive led flashed for a long time, and, while the HD was still flashing, I got the message that I had to activate the installation. Every time I tried, I got a message that I couldn't because some activation module couldn't be found. In fact, any time I tried to access the inernet, any site, I got the same message. Then I got busy and didn't get to look at it again till last night.

I booted it up and and got the same thing. I tried the activation again, but got the same results. Meanwhile the HD was still flashing like crazy, so I just let it sit and do it's thing. Eventually Windows Update came up and downloaded 107 updates - don't think I turned Automatic Updates on yet. After the updates installed, I was able to activate Windows and now everything works fine.

Thanks for the nLite tip. Won't forget that one.

Steve