Upgrading Home Edition to Professional

I was wondering how to go about upgrading Home Edition to Pro. I will be doing it in about 2 weeks and I wanted to know before hand.

When I install Pro, will it "upgrade" Home? and the files will remain?

Or will it all be fresh and new?

If so, then how do I get rid of Home and install Pro?

Sorry if it's a really dumb question, but I am truly clueless on the procedure. Thanks.

 

Yes, your data will be saved and your operating system will be upgraded, but some of your programs will need to be reinstalled. Also, your computer will have lots of left over files from the HOME OS.

I would recommend a clean install. Back all your data to CD or an External Drive. Locate all your programs Install CD or files and have it available after you install the OS. I would also go through the DEVICE MANAGER and jot down the drivers needed for Audio, Dispaly Adapter, LAN/WLAN Adapter, etc. and download the drivers to a CD so I can install it later.

Place your Pro Retail or Upgrade CD in the drive and boot to it. Go through the prompts and confirmation. You can select use existing partition, or at this time you can delete the partition and create new ones. Make sure you select "Quick Format with NTFS" so that you can erase all data. Then continue with installation.

After that, you can load your drivers, install your programs, and copy your data back.

Hope this helps

 

I understand most of that and it was very helpful. I will make a list of all the programs I need and just keep them ready.

However, I'm not sure how to back up the drivers for hardware. Can I download these straight from the HP site (I have an HP Pavilion 763n desktop) or are they already on my PC? If so, where can I find these?

Also, I won't have any files I need left on the PC. It is going to be wiped clean and backed up probably next week. Since my bro is going away, I'm the only one that will really be using this so I wanted to clean it up and install the XP Pro I bought a few days back.

Another question I have is that currently....I have two partitions to my HD. One is the main local disk and the other is for recovery. When I install XP Pro, can I make it so there are no partitions and it is only a single local disk?

Thanks in advanced.

 

The drivers can be easily downloaded off the manufacturer's support website.

Format both partitions, and create a new partition with the full size of the hard drive using FDisk (it's very primitive).

 

Ok, thank you. I will follow all your steps.

Also, would this be the full list of the drivers I need? Or are there more that I need to have backed up manually?

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?os=228&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=90823&lang=en

 

Yes, this looks like most of the drivers. You might also want to download drives for the Realtek Lan Adapter, I didn't see it listed on the site. For the bios update, I wouldn't update unless you're really comfortable flashing the BIOS.

Also, if there is any extra things installed, like a graphics card, ide controller or anything else, you will need the drivers for those also.

Remember to download it and burn it to disk.

Bit of advice, create a folder for each type of drivers,e.g Audio, Video, Lan, Chipset, etc. This will help in later retrieval.

Hope this Help