XP Pro OEM Easy Upgrade from XP Home OEM

Monday 14th May 2007

This has been a real pain for a while for me: You buy a system with XP Home preinstalled because it’s cheap, and then put XP Pro OEM on… but WAIT!! - you have to do a clean install (which isn’t that difficult) but it means you have to find drivers and stuff when it should be easier…

Well, I think I found a solution - not for production though, as I’m sure it violates Microsofts Windows EULA:

  1. Boot into Windows
  2. Start the Upgrade from a RETAIL copy of XP Pro
  3. When the system restarts, replace the retail cd with the oem cd

And hey presto, an upgraded XP Home OEM

Kind of a moot point really, as XP is going away to the nursing home - ah, how we’ll miss you…

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