XP Home over XP Pro

[mike12]

Someone I know has a Dell 4600 that came with XP Home. He formatted the hard drive and installed XP Pro, which was probably not legit, and is now having problems with this WGA etc. thing. He would like to go back to XP Home, but Dell did not furnish a recovery disc. The recovery option was somewhere on the hard drive, but since he formatted the HD, that is gone also. Now, I have a Dell 4700 which came with XP Home on it also, but I requested and received a recovery disc from Dell. Can he use my disc. along with the ID numbers which are on a decal on his machine to install XP Home.
And, is there an easy way to do this, or must he format and do a new install ? Many thanks in advance. Mike

[c_alvarado]

Mike your best bet is to delete all partitions and clear the MBR(Master Boot Record) I ve formatted many dell pcs and it always works. When you delete all partitions not create any just install XP home.

[mike12]

Thanks c alvarado for the reply, but you lost me. Will those options be listed when booting from the recovery disc ? Will this be like a format where everything is lost ?

[glc]

Yes, you may use your recovery disk with his key number. Just remove all but the diagnostic partition (if it's still there) during setup. This will be a small (32mb) FAT partition.

[c_alvarado]

When your formating the computer it asks you what partition to install it on. there should be like 2 or three partions. I would delete all of them. Then onces there all deleted, press enter to install. It will automatically create one big partition.

[c_alvarado]

oh and yes it is a frmatr where everything will be lost. If there are files you need let us know then we will take it from there.