Turn XP Home into Professional

This is one of the wildest Windows hacks I have ever come across. I got a new laptop a few months ago (my first one in years-- employers have always issued them in the past) so I swapped system units with one of my kids. He got the year old HP, I took his two and a half year old Compaq.

His had XP Home, so several features would not work. I came across Wade's Geekport article on changing XP Home to Professional. To my amazement, it worked.

To summarize:

  regedit
    My Computer
      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
        System
          ControlSet00X (highest number)
            Control
              ProductOptions

Add a new DWORD:

Brand = 0

Reboot.

But here's the real trick. After the BIOS screen, start pressing F8 to enter recovery mode. Select Last Known Good Configuration (LNG) and let the system recover. Log in, and check the system properties.