Hi,

I was playing with a Dell with the media edition software on it last night. I like the way you can use the center with one button & then disable it to use windows regularly. Can you install this on a WinXP Pro machine & still keep the system as a WinXP Pro machine (or does it then become a media edition machine?).

Is the media edition a whole OS or just an addon to the existing OS?

Thanks,

Rich

MCE is a full OS - however it is actually at heart XP Pro, but without

some networking features.

MCE is a full OS - however it is actually at heart XP Pro, but without

some networking features.

Ok, so theres no way to just add MCE onto a XP Pro box? Like installing MS office or something like that.

Both are possible. You can just add the Media Center application by copying some files and registry keys from an XP Media Center Edition to your XP Professional. Than it just stays XP Pro, without changing the windows serial code, and with keeping the ability to join a domain. You can find some topics on that on this forum.

You can also install the components from the 2nd CD. I don't know exactly what happens then but you can read about that in the *Ultimate Edition* topic here.

You could also perform an upgrade. That is what I did. First you have to identify your PC as a Media Center PC, some registry key that is. You need a new serial code for that. Windows update will work for MCE then. All settings will be kept and all programs will still work. You don't need other drivers or something, that's all the same. You will loose the ability to join a domain, but there seems to be a work-around if you need it. All the information is somewhere on this forum.

Pay attention, I think My answer is right.

1. You cannt run Media Center by just copy ehome files from MCE2005 to XP pro,,Media Center neet so much so much registry keys and so much files registered to run.

2. you can follow my way in my * Windows XP/2003 Ultimate Edition * topic to turn your XP/2003 to MCE2005 and/or TPC2005,,all functions in your system would not be lost.

3. you can also perform a upgrade installation as flupke had said.