Hi, this is my first post so please bear with me. I am posting this for my Father. He has a Full Version of XP Pro on disc: it can upgrade, or do a full install. He has used used the disc on several of his other computers (going from home to pro) with no issues at all. ANyway, the problem:
My Father has a brand new SOny Vaio - 3.2HT, came through from the factory with 1 partitioned drive: 5GB Invisible partition for Factory restore, C drive is 30GB, and D drive is 85GB.
Has WIN Xp Home eddition installed.
One would think it would be as easy as popping in the cd, and picking 'upgrade to pro' on the cd menu right? Well, the installation is not going through. Bear with me, my Father wasnt able to give me specific error messages here. On the first try, the error was something about having not enough virtual memory? On the second try, he tried booting from the cd to do a full install, and the installation kept 'looping'. It would get through setup, and on the reboot would start all over again. He even tried an upgrade again, but that time the error was something about installing multiple operating systems will cause errors...etc. He's since had to restore everything back to factory, and all is well.

Ive tried to describe everything as accurately as possible. I guess my question in general is - is there something specific to these new Sony setups with the partitioned drive that wont allow a clean or upgraded install? Are we better off to reformat the c and d partitions, and do a clean install? That wont let him use any of his factory software though. IF anyone nows anything, please throw those suggestions at me!
thx in advance
Ken

I had the exact same problem. Did the system come pre-loaded with XP Home Service Pack 1 installed? If so, then you cannot upgrade to a retail version of XP Pro unless it also contains SP1 files.

To create a bootable CD with SP1 slipsteamed into the XP Pro install bits, check out the following link:
http://www.windows-help.net/WindowsXP/winxp-sp1-bootcd.html

So restore your system back to factory defaults, then upgrade using your new CD.

Best of Luck!
Terry

I had the exact same problem. Did the system come pre-loaded with XP Home Service Pack 1 installed? If so, then you cannot upgrade to a retail version of XP Pro unless it also contains SP1 files.

To create a bootable CD with SP1 slipsteamed into the XP Pro install bits, check out the following link:
http://www.windows-help.net/WindowsXP/winxp-sp1-bootcd.html

So restore your system back to factory defaults, then upgrade using your new CD.

Best of Luck!
Terry

That makes sense - but we even got errors doing a full clean install from a formatted C partition. I have since got it working .

peace

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