Vostro 1500 and XP

I recently purchased a Vostro 1500, with XP Home Version.

I've been looking around about upgrading and came across two options. A 'clean' upgrade or just straight from home version to prof.

Also just to make this more interesting I was reading online that if I wanted to 'clean' upgrade I should use XP Prof and have SP2 installed before browsing the internet; however, the CDs I have are a bit...dated. They don't have SP2 or any SP (as far as I can tell)

I'm look for advice should I just straight upgrade from Home -> Prof or should I try to 'clean' upgrade.

If it helps any I plan on keeping the Vostro for awhile.

Thanks

 

XP Home is all you need for basic home computing. XP Pro and Home are very similar. There is little between the two. XP Pro is supposedly a little more secure and has better network capabilities than Home.

If you feel comfortable I would reformat the hard drive and install XP Home SP2.

p.s. I use XP Home on all my XP systems.

 

Is there any specific capability you need in Professional? Otherwise, it is not worth the trouble upgrading Home to Professional in any way.

If you need remote access capabilities which are the most important advantages of Professional, I prefer the following software and they work in both XP versions.

For desktop access: RealVNC

For secure shell and sftp access: freesshd

Do you also need a http server?

 

You can download SP2 and burn it to a CD
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=049C9DBE-3B8E-4F30-8245-9E368D3CDB5A
That's if you want to do the clean install from the old discs.

If you want to do the clean install, be sure to read the install guides about needing the AHCI drivers.

 

Since SP3 is out, it makes little sense to not use it. I would recommend you use nlite to create a SP3 slipstreamed install ISO. That will work wonders especially if you cut out the unnecessary crap services.

 

I'd wait on SP3 as Microsoft is aware of issues after it's release. I installed SP3 on my laptop and I can't install any updates. They all fail and others are experiencing constant reboots.

Supposedly there's a fix in the works.

 

That is weird since I have been testing XP3 for almost a year. Never experienced any of that. I have had no problems. I have it on my Eee and several VMs.

 

Thanks for all the replies

I heard that I need to use floppys to boot up XP, but my Vostro 1500 doesn't have a floppy drive can I just use the install CDs as are or what?

 

The XP CD should be bootable...a copy of XP Home retail that I bought years ago was bootable. You just need to make sure the boot order is set in the BIOS to let it boot from CD's before the hard disk, or you can hit F12 to one-time boot from the CD.