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Q: Upgrading an HP Pavilion from XP Home to Professional (setup error) ( Answered 4 out of 5 stars,   0 Comments )
Question  
Subject: Upgrading an HP Pavilion from XP Home to Professional (setup error)
Category: Computers > Operating Systems
Asked by: i_drank_what-ga
List Price: $10.00
Posted: 18 Feb 2006 18:20 PST
Expires: 20 Mar 2006 18:20 PST
Question ID: 447471
I just bought a HP (d4100e) running XP home. I attempted to upgrade to
XP professional using a disk that I didn't receive from HP.I get this
lovely error message:
Setup cannot set the required Windows XP configuration information.
This indicates an internal setup error.

Thing is, I'm already running Home so this is crazy talk. I'm assuming
HP did something so that I can't upgrade the OS without running to
them. The MS knowledge base claims the error means something in the
machine isn't XP ready.I'd rather not attempt a clean install for two
reasons. 1) what if there really is a hardware problem? Two, I'd
rather not lose the plastic-whistle-esque software that HP included
with the machine.

Can you tell me how to get my XP professional installation disk to
upgrade this machine in a user friendly way (IE without me paying for
more software or returning the machine, but possibly with muttering
about BIOS and registry)?
Answer  
Subject: Re: Upgrading an HP Pavilion from XP Home to Professional (setup error)
Answered By: sublime1-ga on 18 Feb 2006 20:39 PST
Rated:4 out of 5 stars
 
i_drank_what...

Okay, here's what I found, all courtesy of Microsoft.
Here's the main upgrade page:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/upgrading/default.mspx

According to this page, your XP Home installation IS 
eligible for an upgrade:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/upgrading/matrix.mspx

Download and run the Windows XP Upgrade Advisor to assess
the readiness of your current system for the upgrade. It's
a large download, and the program mimics the installation
process, but does not install the new operating system.

"The Upgrade Advisor is a tool that checks your system
 hardware and software to see if it is ready for upgrade
 to Windows XP. If you run Upgrade Advisor while you are
 connected to the Internet, and if your system needs
 updates that are available on the Windows Update Web
 site, Upgrade Advisor will find and install the updates
 for you."
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/upgrading/advisor.mspx

Once your system has been certified ready, use the steps
on this page to continue the installation:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/getstarted/installquick.mspx


That should get you where you want to be!

Please do not rate this answer until you are satisfied that  
the answer cannot be improved upon by way of a dialog  
established through the "Request for Clarification" process. 
 
A user's guide on this topic is on skermit-ga's site, here: 
http://www.christopherwu.net/google_answers/answer_guide.html#how_clarify 
 
sublime1-ga


Additional information may be found from an exploration of
the links resulting from the Google searches outlined below.

Searches done, via Google:

upgrade "XP home" XP Pro OR Professional"
://www.google.com/search?q=upgrade+%22XP+home%22+XP+Pro+OR+Professional%22+

Request for Answer Clarification by i_drank_what-ga on 19 Feb 2006 09:44 PST
Thank you for your efforts. 

Unfortunately, your suggestion did not work. After installing the
Microsoft XP Upgrade Advisor, I attempted to run it. I was informed
that "the version of windows on your computer is newer than the
version on the CD". It then refused to let me check if I was ready to
upgrade. This was on a clean install of XP Home edition 2002 SP 2.

Incidently, prior to following your suggestion, I used the auto-update
feature in XP home to update the operating system and attempted,
again, to install XP professional. It failed and gave me the same
message that I mentioned in the original question. I then recovered to
a clean install of home from HP's built in recovery partition and did
what I described in the previous paragraph.

So...the question still seems unanswered.

Clarification of Answer by sublime1-ga on 19 Feb 2006 11:37 PST
i_drank_what...

It seems that the problem consists of the fact that your
Home installation is SP2, and your Pro CD is SP1, as
suggested by this dicussion on Experts Exchange:
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/WinXP/Q_21713706.html

This problem has 5 possible solutions, all described on
this page from Icerva Software:
http://www.icervasoftware.ca/Home/SP2Downgrade.asp

The fifth solution (similar to the fifth element) seems
the most successful, but requires a little work. It's
called 'slipstreaming' and involves integrating SP2
into the installation files for XP Pro, and thus doing
an upgrade of Home SP2 to Pro SP2, and bypassing the
error. This is detailed on another page from Icerva:
http://www.icervasoftware.ca/Home/Slipstream.asp

...as well as on this page from the Win Supersite:
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp2_slipstream.asp

Let me know where this takes you...

sublime1-ga


Modified searches done, via Google:

"windows on your computer is newer" upgrade "XP home" XP Pro OR Professional"
://www.google.com/search?q=%22windows+on+your+computer+is+newer%22+upgrade+%22XP+home%22+XP+Pro+OR+Professional%22+

Request for Answer Clarification by i_drank_what-ga on 20 Feb 2006 14:21 PST
Thanks for the information. I should have pointed out that both the
desktop and the cd were SP2...just the first was professional and the
second home. I'm thinking that what is really happening is that HP
uses an OEM implementation of XP and I'm not going to be able to
directly update the operating system.

Clarification of Answer by sublime1-ga on 20 Feb 2006 15:46 PST
That may be the case. A search for:

upgrade HP "windows home"
://www.google.com/search?q=upgrade+HP+%22windows+home%22

...turns up this product, which may be the only way to 
accomplish the upgrade:

"Hewlett Packard Windows XP Professional Edition SP2 Upgrade
 Version for PC"
http://www.epinions.com/Hewlett_Packard_MicrosoftReg_Xp_Pro_Upgrade_Software_PV768A/display_~full_specs

And here's another listing for it, with Product ID and Part #:
http://www.shopping.com/xPF-Hewlett_Packard_MicrosoftReg_Xp_Pro_Upgrade_Software

Since this is an edition earmarked specifically for HP,
it makes sense that it's for updating an OEM version.

Unfortunately, a search for this product turns up only 6
fruitless results:

"Hewlett Packard Windows XP Professional Edition SP2 Upgrade"
://www.google.com/search?q=%22Hewlett+Packard+Windows+XP+Professional+Edition+SP2+Upgrade%22

Nor did a search eBay or Amazon turn up anything.

However, a search for the MPN (Microsoft Part Number?) does
produce a useful result:

PV768A
://www.google.com/search?q=+PV768A

...which is the product on HP's shopping site:
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/product_detail.do?product_code=PV768A%23ABA

It wouldn't be any fun to have to pay for this, but 
perhaps the place where you bought the computer will
have a copy of this lying around, and be willing to
perform the upgrade for you.


Ah...here's a post on a newsgroup that seems to confirm
what you're thinking:

"You cannot upgrade from home oem to pro retail version."
Much more on the page:
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.general/browse_thread/thread/3e8ea1d01bfc04a5/669a3f72396d6303%23669a3f72396d6303?sa=X&oi=groupsr&start=2&num=3


Though I was ultimately unsuccessful in helping you accomplish
the impossible, I hope you bear in mind that my job is to 
research the possibilities and, if they exist, provide them to
you. Also keep in mind that GA researchers only received 75% of
the question price. I think I've more than earned that.

sublime1-ga

Request for Answer Clarification by i_drank_what-ga on 20 Feb 2006 18:45 PST
For some reason I can't add a comment so I put this in as a
clarification. While the expert was working on the mission impossible
version of this problem, I went digging in Google's Groups search
tool. The best solution I came up with was to do a parallel
installation of professional on the same sector of the hard drive as
the home installation.

A parellel installation allows one to grab missing drivers (I had 4
missing drivers versus the six for the poor fellow who came before me)
from the other partition (I think there's a walkthrough at a website
called windowsreinstall.com or something similar...).

I'm not that windows savvy so I had a devil of a time getting them
over (the drivers folder wouldn't get recoginized), but it turns out
that HP left a folder on the C drive called C:\HP\drivers where the
wankers left installable versions of the drivers.

While I like the HP machine, I don't appreciate how they handled
things. For example they sent me a customer service survey. The first
question was if I had voided my warranty. After I said no (because at
that point I had gone back to the home installation and my machine was
a pure as new snow), the survey abruptly ended.

Clarification of Answer by sublime1-ga on 20 Feb 2006 21:26 PST
i_drank_what...

I'm glad the parallel installation worked out for you.
I ran across that idea, but neglected to mention it.

This article might be of some interest to you, as well:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/03/xp_hack/

sublime1-ga
i_drank_what-ga rated this answer:4 out of 5 stars
While the expert was ultimately unable to answer my question, as
phrased I don't think he/she would been able to answer it without a
ridiculous amount of information regarding the inner workings of HP.
However, he/she did attempt multiple times to help me.

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