Installing XP 'upgrade' on new homebuilt

[Matejcek]

I'm building a new PC around a 2.66 GHz Pentium D, on a uATX motherboard. The new system will have a 250 GB SATA hard drive and a SATA DVD writer.

The system will replace an old 500 MHz Presario, running XP Home from a 14GB IDE drive. I'm uncertain about how I'm going to get XP onto the new machine.

I plan to bring the IDE hard drive and an IDE CD writer (and perhaps the floppy drive) from the old system to the new one. I expect that I'll be able to boot XP from the old IDE drive on the new system. But I want to do a clean install of XP on the SATA drive.

The Presario came with W98 preloaded. There came a time when I upgraded it to ME. In time I came to hate ME so much that I rolled it back. Later I bought an XP Upgrade, installed it, and have been using it ever since.

I'm trying to figure out the most pain-free approach to getting a fresh copy of XP running on my SATA hard drive. It's completely legitimate; I own a legal license to XP. But it's an upgrade version, and it isn't going to see an old operating system on the SATA drive.

Here are some approaches that I've thought of:

- Boot from the the old IDE drive, drop in the XP Upgrade CD and tell it that I want to re-install -- but onto the SATA drive. This would be the easiest. I just don't know if it will work. Will the XP installation ask me which drive I want to install on? Will this work?

- Take a 'full' (non-upgrade) XP installation CD from one of the the other systems I have running XP, install it on the SATA drive, then 'upgrade' it -- reinstall it -- using the real, legitimate XP CD for this system. This would probably work.

- Install XP on the SATA drive using one of my other full XP installation CDs, and when it prompts for the product key, use the product key from the upgrade CD. This might work.

I'm not trying to do anything illegal, I'm just trying to move my copy of XP from a years-old workhorse to my new hotshot homebuilt. Any suggestions?

[flanzig1]

If you still have the ME install disc, you can use that when the XP install asks for a previous version.

[Matejcek]

Originally Posted by flanzig1 If you still have the ME install disc, you can use that when the XP install asks for a previous version.

Hmmmm... I didn't recall that the XP install ASKs for a previous version. My recollection is that it goes out and looks on disk. Are you saying that if it looks on disk, and doesn't find an appropriate system, that it will give me the opportunity to hand it another OS disk as the 'previous' system?

I considered installing ME and then doing the XP upgrade -- but the ME disk is an upgrade disk also.

Regards,

Paul in WI

[flanzig1]

You don't need to install an older version of Windows on the HD for an XP Upgrade install. Just start the XP install from the XP disc and at some point it will ask about a previous version, put in the old OS CD/XP looks at it/then remove the ME CD and put back the XP CD/ the install should finish up.

[Matejcek]

Thanks -- that's very good news. I look forward to the belated arrival of my hardware tomorrow, and a running system before midnight!

Regards,

Paul in WI

[andper10]

If the ME CD thing doesn't work I have had the following work successfully:
Install an XP OEM copy (even though its liscense is being used on another PC) up until it asks for the serial number. Then pop in your XP upgrade CD and restart the computer and it will see a "previous" version of windows and allow your to "upgrade". Then you can format and do a clean install of XP.
Enjoy your build!

[Gen.Ben]

haha, Good ol' ways to scam M$.

[Matejcek]

Originally Posted by Gen.Ben haha, Good ol' ways to scam M$.

No scam whatsoever. These are legitimately licensed software products. As one who made a handsome living for many years developing software, I am sensitive to theft of software, and I don't do it. Microsoft just sometimes makes it very difficult to continue to use one's legitimately licensed software.

Speaking of which: This new home-grown computer ran immediately upon power-up. I'm using it now. Loading XP was easy -- two of the methods discussed worked just fine. Sadly, I neglected to sort out a strategy for bringing over a couple of products, notably Word and Excel. The were pre-installed on the first OS on my old computer, and I have no distribution disks for them (unless I can figure out how to squeeze them out of my old Compaq 'recovery' disks...). They are on the old hard drive (that is intermittently installed on the new system), but I despair of bringing them to the new system in a running condition. Is there an easy way to recover them? Or should I go start a new thread somewhere???

Grateful for the ideas and support,

Paul in WI