problem installing xp home over pro

[eaglemini]

howdy there guys,

I was trying to boot windows xp home over xp pro today (the pro was already when i bought it and I dont have the key)

Anyway, the hard drive in 2 partitions, I formatted one partition and then tried to install home over the other. It started installing ok but after a while (about half an hour) it got stuck on the boot up screen. I restarted it and it comes up with 2 os but the clock timer is on 0 and I cannot choose to run the original os (pro).

Everytime it boots therefore, it is stuck on the windows loading screen. Ideally I would like to wipe everything and start fresh. Can that be done through Bios?

Any help would be great, thanks.

 

[tomrca]

i am quite sure that installing home over xp is not possible. you will most likely need to format. i am sure if i am wrong someone will correct me

 

[howard_hopkinso]

Hello and welcome to Techspot.

To wipe everything and start a fresh do the following.

1 Restart your computer and go to setup usually by pressing the F2 or delete key.

2 Once you get into setup look for the boot menu and make sure you set it to boot from cd first followed by your hard drive.

3 Put the Windows xp disk into your cd.

4 Now save your settings and exit setup.

5 While your computer is booting you will see a message that says "press any key to boot from cd" press any key.

6 When the welcome to setup screen appears press enter and then press F8 to accept the Microsoft licence agreement.

7 You will be prompted to repair an insallation press the escape key.

8 Now select the partition that you want to reformat and press the D key to delete it(delete all partitions). you will be asked to confirm that you want to delete the partition. Follow the onscreen prompts.

9 Now press C to create a brand new partition you will be asked what size you want the partition to be in mega bytes. If you just press enter then the partition will be the maximum size that you can have. This is perfectly ok if you don`t want to create multiple partitions.

10 You will now be asked to format the partition select the ntfs file sytem and do a full format.

11 Once the format is complete setup will continue.

Your computer will restart during the remaining setup again you will be asked to press any key to boot from cd DO NOT PRESS ANYTHING. and setup will continue. Once the setup is complete and you are back in Windows remove the Windows cd from your cd drive.

Regards Howard :wave: :wave: