Windows XP – Convert Home Edition To Professional Edition Without Reinstalling
Once you have installed Home Edition (HE) or Professional (Pro) Edition of Windows XP on your PC, it is officially impossible for you to convert/ upgrade your XP HE to XP Professional Edition or the other way round, i.e. downgrade from XP Professional Edition to XP Home Edition without actually reinstalling or reformatting the OS.
Though most of the times such conversions are linked to illegitimate reasons, sometimes users can look to convert their Windows XP Edition due to a legitimate reason.
A user who has been using Home Edition of Windows XP, might have bought (or received as a gift) a genuine license for Professional Edition so as to replace the pirated version that is been installed. However, he/she might not want to run through the long installation process of Windows XP all over again or might wish to keep all the data on the PC intact.
Nevertheless, it is possible that you convert/ upgrade your Home Edition of Windows XP to Pro Edition without reinstalling the OS. But, you need to note that this trick does not actually install/add all the features such as Group Policy Editor and Remote Desktop Server which are present in Professional Edition but absent in Home Edition.
Also, some functions such as RAID, EFS that are disabled or turned off through integrated switches which identify the OS version from the registry flag, might not work after the conversion. The trick will only work to allow Home Edition of Windows XP to identify itself as Professional Edition.
Follow the below mentioned procedure:
- Go to the Start Menu and select “Run” to open the run command box. Type in “regedit” and press “Enter” key to open the Registry Editor.
- Navigate to the below mentioned path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet00X/Control/ProductOptions
ControlSet00X has to be the one which has the highest number corresponding to “X”.
- You need to delete the registry key “ProductSuite”.
- Now, create a DWORD value and name it as “Brand”.
- Fix the value data for “Brand” as “0”.
- Restart your computer.
- While the system is booting, press F8 and select the option “Last Known Good Configuration” and press “Enter” Key.
Windows XP will now start up normally. Once you log on to the desktop, just right-click on “My computer” and select the option “Properties” to view “System Properties”. You will see that your system is now converted to XP Professional.