Convert and Upgrade Windows XP Home to Professional Without Reinstalling
After installing Windows XP Home Edition or Windows XP Professional Edition onto a computer, officially it’s impossible for user to convert, or upgrade from Windows XP Home to Pro edition, or downgrade from Windows XP Professional to Home edition without reformatting and reinstalling the operating system from clean and fresh state.
A lot of people always associate conversion of Windows XP edition to illegitimate or privacy reason, but sometimes, there may be legitimate and genuine reason for change, such as customer, who all the while using Windows XP Home Edition (HE) finally buy a genuine license product key for Professional edition to replace the illegal pirated version installed, or user receives additional license as gift, but don’t want to go through clean install Windows XP again, or want to keep using the computer with all data intact without interruption.
Here’s a trick to convert and turn Windows XP Home Edition to Windows XP Pro Edition, from within the operating system without going through installation again. Ok, let’s be frank. The hack doesn’t actually install and add in all the features from Windows XP Professional that Windows XP Home lacks of, such as Remote Desktop Server (see guide to install Remote Desktop on XP Home) and Group Policy Editor (GPedit) utility tools, which has been removed on Windows XP Home edition. Some functions which turned off and disabled via integrated switches which read from registry flag whether it’s Home or Professional edition, such as EFS, RAID support and ability to join domain, may or may not work after migration. Basically, the trick only work to let Windows XP recognizes itself as Professional edition.
To convert and upgrade Windows XP Home to Windows XP Professional, follow procedure below.
- Open Registry Editor (regedit).
- Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet00X/Control/ProductOptions, where ControlSet00X is the one with the highest number.
- Delete the ProductSuite registry key.
- Then, create a new DWORD value and named it as Brand.
- Set the “Brand” value data as 0.
- Reboot the system.
- On boot up after the BIOS screen, press F8 to display Windows XP Startup Menu.
- Choose Last Known Good Configuration (LNG) and hit Enter.
Windows XP will start up as usual. After logging into the desktop, check the system properties to verify that it’s now Windows XP Professional.
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November 21st, 2009 11:40
How do I reverse this process?
I just upgraded my PC to SP3, and now I can’t log in because I get this error: “A problem is preventing Windows from accurately checking the license for this computer. Error code 0×80004005.” I believe this tweak may have something to do with it.
November 18th, 2009 19:19
hello …
thank you ,nice trick …
can i convert xp pro to home ?!
Thanks …
November 12th, 2009 15:34
Hey great upgrade, dude any ideas about how to make the system update it’s time automatically according to the server?
November 9th, 2009 07:50
It worked smoothly on my eeepc 1000h with asus’ oem m$ xp home.
Nice stuff you got here. Congrats.
November 6th, 2009 07:15
Ok, so this is for illegal versions of XP, but I just got a second hand pc with XP Home and I think it is a legal version (I got it as a gift from a lawyer company wich deals with copyrights and stuff). And I happen to have an original Microsoft legal CD of XP Professional somewhere in my room, I just need to find it.
Is there any way to upgrade it legaly, with the true XP Professional without reformating? I also got Microsoft Office with the new PC and I don’t want to lose that on the reformat as I don’t have a legal copy of MS Office and I would rather keep as much legal programs as possible…
Hum, I mean, I always keep everything legal, don’t you think I have an illegal copy of Photoshop or anything, or even the entire Adobe Creative Suite 4 for everyday professional use. No, no, of course not.
October 31st, 2009 03:48
Ok, so I used this trick on my desktop when I had XP Home, but I just installed Windows 7 Home Premium and I’m wondering if this could be adapted for changing Windows 7 Home Premium to think it is Pro or Ultimate? Any ideas would be appreciated.
October 23rd, 2009 18:49
Nice trick!
It realy works with WInXP Home SP3 !
October 22nd, 2009 00:56
i don’t think this will work on sp3. cause what happens is system freezes up on restarted. also editing registry keys doesn’t work… it’ll revert back to original values???
October 16th, 2009 03:27
EDIT ON THAT LAST POST: when i said clear the registry i didn’t mean clear the registry like whipe it clean i just meant clear the registry key for ProductSuite.
October 16th, 2009 03:24
Thanks a lot man, took me a few tries, at first it was giving me the error message I couldn’t erase the registry key, then tried to just clear the registry, rebooted & it still wasn’t working. But after like the third try I saw that they added controlset006 to the registry (previously just controlset003 was highest), changed the settings in control set 6 and vuala! It’s now recognized as xp pro, thanks a lot dude!
October 5th, 2009 04:47
Restored System and got back to normal Home edition.
October 5th, 2009 04:07
The trick is useless, local security policy console did not show up.
September 30th, 2009 04:30
It really works (on wmware workstation)
September 10th, 2009 23:29
you are genius!!! worked on my win xp home at first try. but it’s better to blank the value of product suite instead of deleting it.
September 10th, 2009 03:45
Wow, thanks so much!
August 24th, 2009 13:11
This worked great and allowed us to use remote desktop on my wife’s pc. However, shortly after this change the system installed SP3 and afterwards we couldn’t access the system. I tried a solution to use recovery console to overwrite the necessary files but we still got the same error. I restored back to a system restore point to get access to the machine, but when I try to reverse the changes it won’t allow me to. Recreating the ProductSuite key is not permitted -it gets deleted as soon as you exit regedit. I was even clever and saved the reg configuration to I could restore the key back when I initially did this hack but it too is not allowed.
In all not a big deal but something to keep in mind for those looking to try this. Either make sure you have sp3 already installed, or live without auto update (minor updates work fine)
August 18th, 2009 12:12
Woowww Thanks!!