[jseg]

In order to get on the network at work I need to upgrade to XP Pro. They tried to do it for me at work but the disk didn't work. Does anyone know what I need to buy/do to upgrade to XP Pro?

[dragonmule]

Originally Posted by jseg

In order to get on the network at work I need to upgrade to XP Pro. They tried to do it for me at work but the disk didn't work. Does anyone know what I need to buy/do to upgrade to XP Pro?

There is a program called "Xteq X-Setup 6.1" which you can use to change the registry entry that prevents joining domains in Home Edition. There may be a legal risk to this even though that sounds silly. If you have an XP Pro license but just don't want to reformat, this is perfectly okay. Xteq can set just about everything to XP Pro except for Group Policy Editor and Remote Desktop.

If you want an actual disk to do the upgrade, you can buy the upgrade disk which also grants the license. These generally cost about $200, such as

VioSoftware: Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2 Upgrade E85-02666

Disks for $100 or less are usually the incorrect license (OEM, CTO, etc) and there is no point in trying to get a legal license this way. Selling incorrect licenses has been a scam for quite some time on the internet, beginning with people selling Windows Certificates of Authenticity which aren't actually licenses for anything, just shiny pieces of paper guaranteeing that the license you don't have would be authentic if you owned it. OEM licenses are supposed to be included with new hardware (e.g. a new computer from a computer builder) and some companies skirt this by sending a piece of some hardware. Beware also of licenses for different countries being sold which you won't even know until it rejects your license unless you append a foreign country code to the server i.e. .tw or .sg. These may "work" for registration but are no more legal than not having a license at all.