XP home to Pro

I've been running XP home for a while now, and noticed a drastic slow down and increase in errors over the last 6 months. so i have got a copy of XP Pro, and was going to upgrade in the first instance, see how the PC performs then, and then if its still playing up - format c: and install XP Pro from scratch.

The problem comes in that the CD drive when running in XP is performing erratically, and wont read the XP Pro CD properly, amongst others, and i get a debug error when i try to run setup.

so i downloaded an XP boot disk from bootdisk.com, rebooted from the floppy, and got to the a: prompt with cd drivers installed. i then cd to the cd drive (normally d, but renamed to r: in this case) and into /i386/ and run winnt.exe

to which i get the following error on the first blue setup screen-
"internal error - could not find a place for a swap file ".

any clues?thanks.

 

Hello Brendan,

I won't address the particular problems you posted about, haven't the time, but someone else will.

I will make some observations: if you have had trouble with home for the last six months, Pro is not going to solve it, especially if you upgrade over it.

I would pick between identifying what the chronic problem(s) are or, doing a clean install, not upgrading, which will just carry over the problems.

EDIT:Just reread your post, ok clean install. But you may end up in the same situation down the line. There is nothing about Pro that is inherently going to keep the system problem free. You have to assure that.

Regards - Charles

 

Not sure why you want to take the long road to Pro.

As charlesvar has expressed so eloquently, upgrading will not solve problems. Pro has more processes running by default than Home and a system that is not running at peak performance is the worst candidate for an upgrade.

Save your stuff, bite the bullet, format the drive, and install Pro cleanly. Defragment right after installing to get all the system stuff neatly at the beginning of the drive. You'll save time and be glad you did.

Pro can be trimmed and configured so that it runs exactly like Home, but the opposite is not true, of course.

Then come back and get tips for keeping things running fast and smooth. Some of the default settings in XP do not seem to be the best settings.

Of course, none of this will help if the CD is scratched or the CD-ROM is not performing properly. Use a cleaner on it, just in case, and then try copying a full CD into a folder on your desktop to be sure the drive can access the entire CD before attempting setup. If track movement is restricted, the drive may be able to access part of the CD but not the whole thing (just had this problem myself---a wire rubbing on the carriage).