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Convert Home Edition To Professional Edition Without Reinstalling

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.

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Uninstall Microsoft Office 2007 Suite By Complete Registry Removal

Tool For Uninstalling Microsoft Office 2007 Suite By Complete Registry Removal

Many times you might have faced a problem while uninstalling Microsoft Office 2007 Suite from your PC using Uninstall Program or Add & Remove Program options from the Control Panel. Windows shows error messages saying setup has failed and it is in a process of rolling back changes. There might be various different reasons behind this un-installation issue.

The reasons may include invalid or corrupt components, leftovers from trial or pre-release version of MS Office 2007, invalid or illogical registry values left after an attempt of hacking MS office 2007 full version or installation of various editions of MS Office numerous times.

If your attempt of automatically uninstalling MS Office 2007 Suite fails due to any of the above mentioned reasons, you might try uninstalling MS Office 2007 manually. However, the procedure of manually uninstalling MS Office 2007 is quite lengthy and time consuming.

 

If you want to quickly delete all the registry values, keys and entries related to MS Office 2007, you may use “Microsoft Office 2007 Registry Complete Removal Tool”. This tool deletes or removes all the MS Office 2007 related registry values, keys and entries from your system registry and restores it to the original state (the state before MS Office was installed).

You may also use this tool as an additional utility for completing the un-installation procedure of MS Office 2007 Suite, before you delete the installation folders and files of MS Office 2007.

You need to note that this tool deletes numerous registry keys which might affect your system stability if you do not reinstall MS Office 2007. Therefore, you have to use this tool only if you want to reinstall MS Office 2007 as reinstallation is not possible until and unless Office 2007 is properly uninstalled from your system.

You may download this tool by downloading the file “Office2K7DelReg.zip” from Here.  Unzip the contents of the file to a folder. Run the file “Uninstall.exe” and click on the button “Uninstall” to uninstall MS Office 2007 Suite by complete registry removal. Before you start, remember to take a backup of your system registry by accessing the Registry Editor.

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How Can I Export My Bookmark Settings From Mozilla Firefox

Exporting the Bookmark Settings in Mozilla Firefox

There are many ways that you can store the bookmarks settings of your Firefox web browser. This is extremely useful, if you are going to uninstall Firefox, and then reinstall it for some reason (say you might be about to format your C-drive). And, like most things in life, there is a short-cut way to do this, and there is a longer way. This article lists out the steps involved in both routes.

Method 1. The shorter way.

  1. Launch Firefox web browser.
  2. Navigate to Bookmarks -> Organise Bookmarks.
  3. A new dialog will open up, which has all the bookmarks listed under various categories. In the toolbar to the top, click on Import and Backup, and select the Export HTML option from the drop-down menu.
  4. Select an appropriate folder where you want to save the bookmark.html file (you can change the file name if you wish), and then click on Save.
  5. Exit Firefox.

Method 2. The longer way.

  1. Enable the option for viewing hidden files in Windows Explorer. [If you don’t know how to do it, you can get the instructions here.]
  2. Now, you have to go to the folder:
    C:\Documents and Settings\<user profile name>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\ Profiles\ <string of random characters>.default\
    The .default folder will have a few random characters as the file name like wcgyadfg.default.
  3. Now, select the bookmark.html that is most recent – and right-click on it.
  4. Copy this file and then Paste in on your Desktop.

In both cases, when you launch the newly installed Firefox browser, you can either Import the bookmark.html file that you export/paste on Desktop; or you can copy paste the same file in the folder that you accessed in Step 2 of Method 2. This will ensure that your previous bookmark settings are loaded on to the new Firefox, and you can browse with ease.