Hello all,

 

I recently purchase a Dell Inspiron 710M laptop with Windows XP Home Edition preinstalled.  As expected, the installation came with a bunch of programs that I don't want and will never use.  I've removed several via 'Add/Remove Programs' but would really rather just have a clean slate which I can then put the Dell drivers on top of.

 

I did request the Windows XP Home CD with the computer and also have a Windows XP Professional CD with license key and everything that I bought some time back.  The XP Pro. is not currently on any of my other systems so is legal, valid and ready to go.

 

So, what I'd like to do is upgrade my Dell to Windows XP Pro.   In doing so, I noticed that there are two extra partitions out there.  I believe one is for diagnostics, and the other is probably the factory default image.  I'd rather not harm those, just in case I ever need them.  So, what I plan on doing is to install XP Pro on the NTFS partition only, and then load Dell drivers back on to the new OS.  My question is, will this still keep the integrity of the diag. and image partitions; i.e. can I still use them if ever needed?

 

Thanks for any suggestions or help.

Tom