Win XP Home to XP Pro

[tractorman13]

I am going to be doing an upgrade from XP Home to Pro; I don't want to reformat the HD because I want the current files, etc. left. What procedure do I use?

[Panama Red]

I believe you can follow the guide in Tips and Tricks for doing a Repair Install. Just use the Pro Product key.

[clroberts]

You can try reinstalling the operating system, however, if you're worried about messing up your old install, I would recommend backing up the system first. If you have Ghost you could image it, otherwise, you'll want to play with another harddrive first. If it were me upgrading the OS, I would just take what I needed off the original install (Pictures, word documents, etc. and just try initially installing the new OS over the top of the old one) I don't know if it will let you upgrade the Home to the Pro otherwise just format the drive. (You might want to set a partition on that drive for the OS. Say about 10-15 Gig. and that way if you have to reinstall the OS, you can just format that partition instead of the whole drive.)