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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Entries (RSS)
March 5th, 2009 04:24
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March 2nd, 2009 00:37
Just ditch xp…go to linux. its simple. you dont even have to put linux on your box, you can run it via a flash drive look into it :google: Ubuntu linux via QEMU
March 1st, 2009 06:51
This worked well for me. I upgraded Home edition to SP3 first, then did this change. Worked well.
February 27th, 2009 05:28
Yes, system restore does work but when you have tried this fix months before sp3 came out windows would have deleted the restore points anyway.
February 14th, 2009 01:48
You dorks, before you do anything like this BACKUP YOUR REGISTRY!!!
System restore works pretty good you know!
I did this to try it out, created a restore point, tried it, worked, but did not want to invalidate the lisence. Restored, return beautiful. If you do this and want the upgrade, you will have to buy a XP license.
February 12th, 2009 09:05
Create a system restore point before you do this. That will make sure you do get any funky effects that other people are complaining about.
February 11th, 2009 21:22
This works great!
BUT, is there someone who has a solution on how to get SP3 on this XP Pro? You can install SP3, but when you reboot, you get an error, so you have to use safety mode to remove SP3 again to login.
So, anybody know if it’s possible to install SP3?
February 6th, 2009 02:14
Nice!
Just a small note: don’t delete the ProductSuite registry key. Empty it.
That way you don’t need to create a new key, Brand, and you can easily restore the system — just put the string (’Personal‘ I think it was) back in place.
If this hack doesn’t work for you, it’s most likely because you didn’t follow point 8 properly.
February 5th, 2009 00:10
Nothing! what did i do wrong? any ideas for me?
February 3rd, 2009 22:56
I’ve followed the instructions as described above on a Compaq machine, freshly installed with the recovery partition and I’ve successfully joined the ‘hacked’ xp pro (previously home) to a 2003 SBS Domain.
Thanks!
January 24th, 2009 16:35
Will it delete all of my documents?
January 19th, 2009 22:43
“mine
January 12th, 2009 17:57 37
my system completely fucked up, yes…it change to xp professional…but vga color won’t go higher than 4 bit…what a mess….better think twice before trying to do as told above.”
I get the same problem but what i did was restart and log in safe mode and admin. then i restart it again and voila!
January 13th, 2009 05:32
if you, like me, has forgoten to backup the registry you can still undo it!
go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet00X/Control/ProductOptions
delete the dword that you created
(just click ok if it complains about windows tampering)
right click and select multi string value
type Personal
click ok
right click on the key and rename it ProductSuite
restart tap F8
go to last known config
then update to sp3
January 12th, 2009 17:57
my system completely fucked up, yes…it change to xp professional…but vga color won’t go higher than 4 bit…what a mess….better think twice before trying to do as told above.
January 11th, 2009 23:55
will it delete all of you computer’s programs?
January 11th, 2009 16:08
Do you have to backup any of your computer files?
January 8th, 2009 13:06
This worked great! Thank you
December 22nd, 2008 22:00
Get winternals and backup registry b4 completing this.
December 16th, 2008 10:58
ok so how do I go back to XP Home Edition ? I really regreted that I did this . and you over at DIGITALLIFE SHOULD PUT SOME KINDA DISCLAIMER THAT THE PC’s WON’T UPDATE AFTER THIS HACK . f*********k
December 15th, 2008 21:11
nothing
December 6th, 2008 14:15
how do you undo this?
everytime i try to type in productsuite it wont save the change?
November 28th, 2008 18:26
Thanks, I upgraded from XP Home to XP Professional as easy as that.
November 28th, 2008 00:03
Your statement that one cannot upgrade XP Home to XP Pro without formatting is not true. However, one can get error message that upgrade not possible due to newer version on computer. In this case, XP Home is SP 3 but upgrade XP Pro is SP2. Simple solution: control panel/remove programs/delete SP3. Now install XP Pro.
November 26th, 2008 04:43
I suspected that would cause problems with updates. When it comes to my software, I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I still know when to stay IN the shed!
November 13th, 2008 00:47
After playing around with it for some time, I have determined that this modification will not add any significant functionality to Windows XP. It will, however, cause the Windows Genuine Advantage Validation tool to flag your OS as hacked, preventing you from installing certain updates and applications. Make sure you backup your registry before trying this hack and that you know how to restore it.