My sister purchased a used Compaq desktop with OEM XP Pro installed. When she tried to update she found out that it was not a legal OS. She purchased a new copy of OEM XP Home and would like to format the hard drive and install the XP Home. Are there any known problems or issues we are likely to run into? I do my own upgrading, updating, software and hardware changes, but have never attempted this before. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you.
If you are doing a bare metal install, there will be no Problems. I know it's kinda late to suggest this, but if there is a Windows COA sticker on the Compaq, you can order the recovery CD appropriate for that COA for a nominal charge and she will be completely legal. It's probably a lot less than what she paid for a retail copy of XP Home.
If you don't have the original CD with the driver's, one of these program's may be of help: http://www.soft32.com/download_8412.html or http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/ (both free).
once you have the new windows installed with all drivers use the free macrium reflect to make a full image backup. (similar to a recovery disk). also it's a good idea to partition the hard drive before installing windows. Example 20gb system partition, remaining space data partition. It's safer this way, if windows gets corrupted, you can just reinstall it, without destroying the data partition. http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp
