A couple of things here.

I am planning on installing windows server 2003 on one machine and create a local domain. I noticed that my other machines are running windows xP home edition. This means I would have to use an WINXP upgrade CD to upgrade to WINXP professional so they can join the domain (unless somebody knows a way around this through XP HOME). The question is, these machines came preinstalled with XP home (emachine, compaq machine etc), and I was wondering if I purchased XP professional upgrade with SP2, would it upgrade pretty smoothly? I don't have the original XP disks b/c it came preinstalled on these computers. Would I lose my files and programs in the upgrade? Any answers on this would be appreciated.

1/4/2006 11:46:31 AM

not sure about upgrading XP Home to XP Pro...but there are ways to allow XP (non Pro) systems to join domains...something to the effect of running the System Restore utility and copying the original registry file in command line mode

well i googled a little and couldnt find it, but I personally did the trick with my Windows XP Media Center Edition PC (domain is not available under my computer just like xp home) and I joined a domain...takes about 5-10 minutes to do if you can find the article, but its possible

1/4/2006 12:09:18 PM

I searched for it but couldn't find it either. I know that I can join a workgroup with XP home but I want to be able to join a domain.

I have found a couple of tools but aren't sure how well they work. One was tweakUI and Xteq X.

Any other ideas or know a way around this besides upgrading to xpPRO?!

[Edited on January 4, 2006 at 12:37 PM. Reason : edit]

1/4/2006 12:36:29 PM

another thing that might work, depending on what you need to do with those networked systems, is lets say the domain you create is called TWWDOMAIN. well if you join workgroup TWWDOMAIN you can access SOME of the network resources...I would look around more for that backdoor though

1/4/2006 12:49:40 PM