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95 Comments
- apexified, on 10/12/2007, -3/+30@foolfromhell - You describe their cheap tactics and call them arrogant twice - and yet you say they're a great company?
- snlildude87, on 10/12/2007, -2/+27duggmirror: http://www.duggmirror.com/mods/Hack_to_Change_Windows_XP_Home_to_Windows_XP_Professional/
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+24I suspect you're a liar. Mostly since tens of thousands of people blatantly pirate windows.
unless your friend is Steve Jobs, or something, nobody cares. - Crosshare, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22Does anyone know if this actually works? The instructions get a little vague at the end.
- jenwright134, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19I just tried it out and it works. Who would've thought 2 bits would make the difference?
- mugsy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20@foolfromhell - you're not paying for the installation media, you're paying for a license to use the software. Of course it's simple to add the features to the installation media, but it costs money to develop and support those features.
- sandfish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17They did, but as far as the key validation goes, it's still XP Home... just with Pro files... that's why it's a "Hack".
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17You are still not able to join a domain. Or use any of the advanced networking options in XP Pro.
Just because it says Pro on bootup does not make it Pro. - tempusrob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14"The only importiant difference between XP Home and Pro is the ablitiy to join a domain."
Don't forget Remote Desktop ... as much as I love VNC, RD blows it out of the water. - Cl1mh4224rd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15Now, I'm not one to cry "old", but... Isn't this hack as old as Windows XP?
- dtaylor05, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Does WGA and all Windows Update work with this?
- drwtsn32, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10EXreaction,
XP Pro offers other things that are useful besides the ability to join a domain. GUI access to NTFS ACLs and Remote Desktop, just to name a few.
And you are correct about XP Home supporting one socket while XP Pro supports two sockets, no matter how many cores each socket has. XP Pro could even support 16 "procs" if you had a dual socket mobo with quad core chips and hyperthreading enabled. - praveenmarkandu, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12i for one have no idea what you are talking about
- fishsoda, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8@foolfromhell
It is clear you don't understand how engineering or development work.
Home and Pro are targeted at two different markets. Rather than develop two different products for two different markets they develop one product (Windows XP "Pro") and then disable features for the "Home" version. In the whole scheme of things this costs much less to develop.
This is not arrogant. It is smart. This way they can make money in two different markets at two different pricepoints.
If there were two different products the pricing structure would be nearly the same for both products because of development costs and no one would pay for the Home edition when they can get Pro for the same price. So any time and effort spent in developing a completely different home version would essentially be wasted.
This is one reason why the 9x line of windows was abandoned rather than try to update and maintain it. Both home markets and pro markets now have an NT base and are much better off for it. - mitchb13, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Oh yeah it does! Read it again. You're simply putting the files from your Windows XP Cd and changing the files. Then you burn it and it's a Professional CD. Your old XP Home serial key even works the same.
- thestorey, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13BAM third wheel!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8How long ago did you figure it out?
- klawz, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12"Just shows MSes arrogance. They know it, and its true, that people will pay EXTRA for features that didnt cost ANY extra to put onto the installation CD" ------ Weak. Gee, you mean like almost everything else sold on the planet? Such as Cars, Bottled Water, Phone plans, etc. etc. etc.
- klawz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@rmw132 - are you really so clouded in the mind to not see that all companies, even precious Apple does this? Hell, companies did a very similar thing with Floppies back in the day, made a huge batch, tested for higher speeds, the ones that passed were sold as high density and twice the price, the ones that didn't pass the first test, went though other tests and sold as lower quality floppies. Great analogy to see the whole/big picture, rather than focusing on your anti-MS conjecture.
- Jammerdelray, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10old news and was found to not actually change windows to pro version.
- MstrClark, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6This only works in part. Many Xp Home Edition systems don't come with the files for IIS. FYI..These hacks have been around for a while
- usp8riot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Good tip. Next time I will download and install a whole pirated OS that isn't contaminated with keyloggers and such instead of doing this. Thanks.
- stmiller, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Just in Asia? :)
- Cl1mh4224rd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Hmm, well... it's at least a year old. Oh well.
Here's an article from May 2005: http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/software/howto-change-windows-xp-home-to-windows-xp-pro-105486.php
(Two previous submissions to Digg link to the above page.) - clickwir, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7no, its old news
- itanshi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6that is something, i once had a teacher say i needed xp pro to do some of my homework (otherwise i had to do it at school which worked half the time)
saw people taking notes, to think they might have installed it. scary - shredswithpiks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4or... proof that plenty of digg users have been here less than a year, maybe?
- Surefoot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5So has anyone confirmed that you can do all the things described here?
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_home_pro.asp
For example can the dynamic disk feature be used? - ujangdigg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Microsoft INC??... probably a new startup isn't it :PPPP
- wtfdaemon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Do you normally ask if community news sites link to instructions that allow for illegal behavior?
What a stupid question? Exactly. - HarleyQuinn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3What would be nice is a hack to simply enable Remote Desktop on XP Home edition. That is the only reason for me to consider this larger hack.
- silmeron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Too bad your link doesn't.
- Hellman109, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Err heaps of companies do this, Ive seen heaps of digital camera inparticular have this, many software programs from different vendors etc.
They make the home editions so that they can meet a market, Im sure Microsoft would love to sell every copy of windows as XP Pro with SA - DireWolf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Don't forget Remote Desktop ... as much as I love VNC, RD blows it out of the water."
I totally 2nd that statement. To take it one step further and in the spirit of this post about hacking Windows to upgrade it, there is an easy way to hack XP Pro so that multiple users can simultaneously run concurrent Remote Desktop sessions. See instructions at:
http://sig9.com/articles/concurrent-remote-desktop
I can vouch for its validity. This feature is normally only available on Windows Server 2003. - ,,|,_, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3All this does is change the strartup splash screen and lables in the OS. You get none of the Pro features.
- Obvioustroll, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I think this hack has been known since the day before XP shipped.
- Trevino, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Actually this is new, to me and a lot of other people apparently.
- Larke2000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3does this void the xp home eula? if so, then why not save all the hassle and just pirate xp pro?
either way, no digg. - redxii, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@foolfromhell & jenwright
Changing the bits doesn't install components only found in Pro. - socokoolaid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2how about being able to edit group policies....and set file/folder security policies...just to add a couple of the more usefull ones...
- BenBenMan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3If this is the change-two-bytes-in-setupreg.hiv hack, I'm sure I saw this on Digg last year... still, pretty cool.
- adolfojp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2So, does this install IIS on your "home" edition box?
- XSforMe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@rshnrocket85
The main difference between Pro and Home is its networking features, particularly the ability to join a domain (centralized security policies and equipment management). Unless you have a domain in your network, then there is no point to go Pro. - jerz2dc, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5I'm burying this as lame since this does not add any new functionality to the system. The networking options and advanced administrative tools is what makes XP Pro (professional in the first place). IMHO it's a useless hack. No need to worry about MS coming to your home or shutting anyone down. :-p
- statmobile, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@musgsy
Come on now, of course it's not just "easy" to tweak the installation media to add features that are disable. Maybe this is some valuable insight into cracking the Windows installations CDs, but talk to me after a few security updates. I just don't think you should treat cracking so trivially, and without repercussion. Enjoy your cracking, I'll just stick with systems I pay for and want, and open ones that are really what I want (damn the hardware vendors who don't support all the drivers) OSX and GNU/Linux, respectively. - blankman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Is this going to make validation not work for downloading updates and such?
- XSforMe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Agreed, if you cant join a domain, then what the hell is the point? The startup screen? Boy, this just goes to show how many people just have no idea of the difference between Pro and Home.
- socokoolaid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The purpose is to reveal features restricted on XP home edition
- Cl1mh4224rd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@Trevino: Right. I could've sworn I heard about this shortly after XP's release, but the earliest mention I could find was May 2005, so I'm probably just plain wrong about it being as old as I thought it was.
- WackyT, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Wow! A year old Windows "hack"! And it made it to the main page also. Proof positive a large portion of Digg users are less computer literate than a hamster.
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