upgrade from home to pro(media center)

[chris_j11]

i have a sony vaio xp-home sp2
planning to upgrade to pro-media center
? is it safe to upgrade w/o changing all my settings, installed programs and files in my pc
? will the installation ask for my original xp-home disc i used
? if so, will i have problem using the sony vaio recovery cd's

[rallynavvie]

Usually the recovery CDs are disk images with all the proprietary software that Sony loads on the machine when you get it so they aren't Windows installation disks. I don't even think they have the Windows repair utility on them.

You shouldn't need an install disc for your current OS but with any upgrade like this I'd highly recommend doing a clean install. Get a full OEM Media Center CD and wipe everything clean and start new. Even though it's going from one flavor of XP to another there can always be issues with programs and drivers that you'll try forever to fix to no avail. You'll have to install all your programs and settings again but this is usually for the better.