Just spent several happy hours trying to upgrade a Windows XP Home 
installation to Windows XP Professional. The XP home is updated to 
latest releases and SP's whereas the XP Professional CD is an earlier 
release.

First off the system said that I was trying to install an older 
version of Windows and disallowed the upgrade. As the XPPro can be 
subsequently updated for free on line this 'inability' is poor.

I decided to allow it to install the XP Pro in a different location, 
which it said it would magnanimously allow me to do. After numerous 
reboots, long periods spent "checking my disks" (for what and for why 
and ... I do not know)(Microsoft have been keen on this for many 
years) a significant number of times I have retired in (temporary) 
defeat. Among other things it claims not to be able to find HAL.DLL in 
windrive\SYSTEM32. This Google supplied explanation 
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm sounds highly 
plausible but the files seem to be where they are meant to be. Reet. 
(It usually really means it has put its files on some partition or 
other but has decided that they are really somewhere else).

It's sad when a company with 20 odd years experience (some of them 
very odd) isn't competent enough to make software which can self 
install from a CD when no constraints are made on it as to what it is 
allowed to do to the system. .

I'm about at the "bare new drive" stage, which wouldn't be a totally 
terrible thing, but just in case anyone else can offer insight ...

Any suggestions.

        RM

-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist