It' telling me that the XP home I have on my PC is newer then the XP Pro I am
trying to load. What I Have is XP Pro 2002 and XP Home with service pack 2.
It say I can load it but will lose all my files. What should I do?
Thanks
Eddie
Not a lot of details about what's going on but will guess that you are
trying to reinstall XP on a system that originally shipped with a version
of Windows that didn't include SP2. The computer has since had SP2
installed. Does that sound about right? If yes, the install screen is
telling it like it is.
There is something called a "slipstreamed CD" - a method of combining a CD
of an earlier version of XP with SP2. After that's been created, it can be
used to repair an SP2 machine and you won't get the "new version exists"
messages. I created one of these for my system that started out with the
original XP and was upgraded to SP2 levels using the directions found at
this site:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp2_cd.htm
NOTE: This procedure does not work if you have a customized OEM recovery CD
or customized recovery partition. It will work with retail copies of XP and
with generic OEM CDs.
If you have the right install media and access to another computer, you can
make one of these CDs and then run your repair.
If you do not have the right install media (or access to another computer),
then your choices are more limited. These are all I can think of for now:
1) A "parallel install": Make a new install of Windows to the same
partition. Grab your data files. Move them off to other media - another
hard drive, a CD, a DVD - whatever. When that's finished, you want to get
rid of both the old non-working Windows and the parallel install. Delete
the Windows partition (or let the OEM recovery program toss your files and
restore everything to factory state). Install your programs. Then add copy
your data files back to the hard drive. wiping the original copies of your
files)
2) Install a second hard drive. Let this be your new main drive. (If using
an OEM recovery partition on original hard drive, this will NOT work! see
option 1) Install Windows. Install programs. Attach old drive as a second
drive. Drag your files over to your new drive. Use the old drive as
additional storage.
