replaceing xp home with xp pro

Thank*s for your input. To answer your question. I did download 9 directly from MICROSOFT. The resulting player that appeared on my HOME tower deffinately is different. The main selections on my PRO tower are on the left, the transport controls on bottom. FREE radio is also part of the left selections. The HOME 9 that appeared has the main selections on top, smaller letters, harder to read. This player is more similar to 10 or 11. I like 9 because of it*s overall large uncluttered easy to use size. The other player is the exact opposit. If you have a tower using xp HOME download wmp9 from MS or any third party site and see for yourself. It is too bad that I do not know how to send you screen shots of both. Another solution is to replace HOME with PRO. But I have no idea how to do that. MSN says the PRO 9 cannot be used with HOME, incompatible. I hope this clears things up for you. I will go to a third party site and see if I can find a listing for 9 that works with HOME. If yes, than problem solved. I do NOT have an XP PRO disc nor a valid key code which is why I cannot download 10 or 11, which now that I saw I don*t want anyway. Any solutions are welcome.

HELIX--- I tried the help in the player itself. The info was the version and product key(identifier). That was mo help to me figureing out how to make the HOME player lok exactly like the PRO player. You said that both os*s use the same player. That is logical to me. However when I attempted to download what I would think would be the same player on HOME, an error screen appears, " a newer version of this player already exists. Set up will exit now". It does not give me the option of overwriting or replaceing new for old. How do I either remove the existing player from the os so I can attempt to download the OLD P9. or how do I make the NEW version look like the OLD? It seems to me that if the player is gone, the set up should allow the player to reinstall from either MICROSOFT or a third party site like BROTHERSOFT, or CNET, or DOWNLOD.com ect. If you are right and the 2 players are acctualy one in the same then the OLD P9 should appear on HOME tower. I need you to tell me how to do this. as I said I have no way of provideing you with a screen shot. You will just have to try to download P9 onto HOME and see for your self.

rtrg said:

...I did download 9 directly from MICROSOFT. The resulting player that appeared on my HOME tower deffinately is different....

Click to expand...

You downloaded and installed...

rtrg said:

...However when I attempted to download what I would think would be the same player on HOME, an error screen appears, " a newer version of this player already exists. Set up will exit now"...

Click to expand...

But now you say you couldn't install because of this error: a newer version of this player already exists. So what version do you have? If you already have wmp10, you can't install 9 without uninstalling 10.

Also, WMP9 is no longer available from Microsoft for WinXP, only Win98SE, WinME, and Win2K. Hasn't been for a while now, so are you sure it was WMP9 that you downloaded from Microsoft? Can you provide a link to the file you downloaded from Microsoft? You may have just downloaded codecs for WMP9, and not the player itself.
WMP9 can be downloaded from CNET at this link. I just used this to upgrade a WMP8 system to WMP9 and it's the version you want. I don't have a XP-Home system, but I've never heard of them having different versions

If your PC shipped with SP2, or you used a WinXP-Home-SP2 disk to install with, you probably already have WMP10. Some SP1 systems included WMP10 as well I believe.
If you already have WMP10 you might be able to uninstall it. Check in Control Panel | Add Remove programs and see if Windows Media Player 10 is listed (If you have SP2 you will have to check the Show Updates box, then look under Windows XP Updates). If it's not listed then you won't be able to uninstall it to install WMP9.

If you don't have a DVD/CD ROM Drive, the only way to install WinXP - Pro would be to copy the CD to a folder on the PC over a network connection from a PC that does have a CD ROM, or via a USB flash/external drive.

rtrg said:

...I have no way of provideing you with a screen shot....

Click to expand...

How to Post a Screen shot

1. Find the Print Screen key on your keyboard. It's usually on the right half, to the right of the F12 key, either just above the insert key, or above the numeric keypad. It may be abbreviated (PrtScn or PRTSC) and may also say SysRq.
   
   
   
2. Check to make sure you have the Windows Paint program installed:
   Click Start | All Programs | Accessories and it should be listed.
   If not, here's how to install it (you may need your Windows Installation CD):
   • Click Start | Run and enter appwiz.cpl. This will open the Add or Remove Programs window
   • Click Add/Remove Windows Components to start the Windows Components Wizard
   • Highlight Accessories and Utilities (don't click the box, click the name) then click Details...
   • Highlight Accessories (don't click the box, click the name) then click Details...
   • Check the box in front of Paint
   • click OK until back to the Windows Components Wizard screen.
   • Click Next >; if prompted for your CD, insert it (exit the install Windows screen if it starts up)
   • Click Finish, then close the Add or Remove Programs window
3. Capture the Screen Shot
   • Press the Print Screen key to take a screen shot of the entire screen.
   • Hold down ALT and press the Print Screen key to capture just the active window.
   
   You will not see anything happen, but windows has saved the screen shot into the Windows Clipboard, which is a memory area windows uses anytime you cut, copy, and paste.
4. Open the Windows Paint program (Start | All Programs | Accessories)
5. Press CTRL+V or click the Edit menu and click Paste
   You can now use the drawing tools to draw circles or arrows to highlight info, add titles, or erase any personal info you don't want posted online.
   To select just a portion of the image:
   • Use the dotted rectangular Select tool from the tool bar on the left to draw a rectangle around the area you want to save (Press CTRL+T if the Tool Bar is not displayed)
   • Press CTRL+C to copy that section to the clipboard
   • Press CTRL+N and click No
   • Press CTRL+V
6. Save the file:
   • Press CTRL+S
   • Change Save as Type: to JPEG (*.JPG,*.JPEG,*.JPE,*.JFIF)
   • Give it a name, and choose where you want to save the file.
   • Click Save
7. Attach the file to your post so it will appear as a thumbnail image
   • If using Quick Reply, click the Go Advanced button
   • Click the Paperclip
     at the top of the editor window, or scroll down and click the Manage Attachments button
   • Click the Browse... button and browse to your file
   • Click the Upload button
   • Repeat for any more files, then close the Manage Attachments window
8. To paste as an inline image:
   • Upload your image to an image hosing site (http://www.imageshack.com or http://photobucket.com for example)
   • Determine the link to your image, then enter that link into your post surrounded with image tags
     
     
   • The hosting site may have a link you can click that will copy the link, tags included, onto the clipboard so all you have to do is click in your post and press CTRL+V to paste the link
   • This will be the result:

HTH

Jerry

OUTCASTE--- Thank*s for the input. I know I am driving all of you crazy, but I think I finaly got this liked quite by accident. The story continues. I aqirred 2 dvd drives which I installed and tested consecutively. One worked perfectly using "classic" and REAL ONE. The existing wmp9 gave me an error, "cannot play, missing codec". I will download the codecs and see if that does it, as I did for CLASSIC. The second one does not open the tray. After a couple of minuits the desktop dissapeared and a "RECOVERY" screen came up. This tower(HP 305) has an internal recovery system, NO disc required. Godd since I do not have one. After that process, about 45 minuits, the tower was rolled back to a previous state of unknown point in the past. In the process the NEW wmp9 reverted to the OLD wmp9. The screen still identifies the OS as HOME, NOT PRO. As I write this I am removing many unwanted progtams. Then I will install the wanted programs/software/codecs, ect. My goal is to match the TYAN and DELL PRO towers which both use the OLD wmp9, and CLASSIC. I hope to be able to be up and running in a few hours. I will post a success messege when done. Thank*s to all whoo were gracious to try to help. NO the player is NOT 10 or 11, at least the player is not identified as such. I looked at them on this HP tower, then removed them.

You've got a whole jumble of information and terminology in that post. First, you need to actually determine what version of Windows Media Player is installed on each computer. This is very simple, and I'm not sure why you're having a problem with this.

* Open Windows Media Player.
* Click Help -> About Windows Media Player. The version (9, 10, or 11) will be clearly identified. Look at the attached picture "WMP Version" in this post.

Next, my question is what exactly do you mean by the word "CLASSIC"? Be as specific as possible.

Finally, it seems you're also having various hardware and operating system issues. You'll want to sort these out one at a time. Verify the CD/DVD drives are functioning by simply inserting a CD and seeing if you can just browse the contents. Don't go through Windows Media Player or any other program. Open them through My Computer by first opening My Computer and then right-clicking on the CD/DVD drive icon and choosing Explore. Do not choose Open or Autoplay.

So, you need to post three things:
1) The actual version of Windows Media Player on each computer.
2) What do you mean by the word "CLASSIC"?
3) Whether or not each computer can just read CDs.

From there, we can continue to troubleshoot.