Dell inspiron laptop XP reinstall problemo-

[Blurred]

I had xp professional installed on this laptop. it was doing strange things, so i decided to reinstall XP. Problem is, I only had a home edition disc that i could find, so i tried it. Long story short, that didn't work well, and I want to revert back to my old install of pro. problem is, i go to add/delete programs on it and nothing shows up, not even home xp. I want to delete the home editon install and go back to the old version, which im pretty sure is still on the HD. Suggestions?

[Sphinx]

Wait, what? You reinstalled the OS, now want to go back to the old OS? The old OS is gone, you got rid of it.

Unless you partitioned the drive, the previous system was destroyed.

[wildstyle]

Unlike Macs, when you install a new operating system , you have to re-install all your programs....

Sorry ...

[mcleanro]

If your laptop came with XP Pro installed from Dell, you may be able restore your hard drive to it's original state from the hidden Dell PC Restore partition provided on recent Dell computers.

See http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/ for more info.

Of course you will need to back up your personal files and reinstall all non-Dell provided applications.

[ski_faster]

What about a system restore from a couple weeks ago? Not sure if this would even work since the reinstall of home edition.

[skiaholik]

Ok, so when you installed XP Home did you install it to a different section on your hard drive (did you override the other one)? When your computer boots up do you have to choose after the black bios screen if you want to load home or pro? If I read it correct, you are trying to go into ad/remove programs in the control panel to remove a version of windows (home or pro) and they aren't there? If that's the case its because you can't "remove" and operating system that way. To remove an operating system you have to use a windows install cd or format the hard drive through command prompt.

I've worked for the business school here at UVM fixing computers for a few years so if you want to email or pm me or something with more detail I can probably walk you through doing whatever you need to do to get it back to how you want it. jares AT bsad DOT uvm DOT edu.

[wildstyle]

I had xp professional installed on this laptop. it was doing strange things, so i decided to reinstall XP. Problem is, I only had a home edition disc that i could find, so i tried it. Long story short, that didn't work well, and I want to revert back to my old install of pro. problem is, i go to add/delete programs on it and nothing shows up, not even home xp. I want to delete the home editon install and go back to the old version, which im pretty sure is still on the HD. Suggestions?

Just to clarify, you have completely overwritten your original XP pro Installation. Its 99.99% gone forever unless you have a backup or system image ( very doubtful from above).

You have to reinstall all your applications from scratch to get to where you were before.

The best thing for you to do is to save as much personal data as you can to a seperate disk/networkshare/flashmemory card and reinstall XP from a Dell recovery disk but this time do a full format of the hard drive to delete the left over folders from the previous software application installs. This will give you a clean sheet to work from. Then reinstall all applications.

Feel free to pm me for any info or get my cell number ..... I work for Bill.