Stupidly, I though if I bought these I could turn my TR1A into a TR1AP, which of course you cannot do (unless someone knows how to fool the system??)

As new, Sony Originals. make me an offer…............

what is the difference between the TR1A and the TR1AP?

(we only have the MP here, no A, B, AP or other models)

TR1A = XP Home
TR1AP = XP Professional

[quote author=“jaa668”]TR1A = XP Home
TR1AP = XP Professional

Is that really the only difference? If it is, I only see two possibilities why it shouldn’t work:

1) there’s some kind of model signature in the BIOS that gets checked
2) the rescue CDs check the content of your harddisk.

if it’s 1), then it must somehow be possible to replace your BIOS, or at least that signature. trust me, it is possible.
if it’s 2), nothing easier than that. wipe out your harddisk completely and there’s nothing to check.

I agree.

Its simply not possible to upgrade the XP Home version to Pro,  the install hangs and stops. There has been a lot of postings on Vaiovillage from many frustrated people like me…..

Yes, there is a “signature” somewhere and I suspect its in the BIOS, since I have tried a system restore from an unformatted drive (fdisk) which should have no data on it.

I guess the answer is to flash the BIOS. Any idea how I can get a TR1AP BIOS and flash util??

Wait a minute, you cannot upgrade XP Home to XP Pro using the installation cd (the one that costs 200 retail)? Or is this only for the restore cd?

Great job DayWalker1!

Does this work also for TR3A to TR3AP1 (using restore cd)?

The restore cd’s are tricky, they have a little app that cheks the model number. It is not a rocket science to write a little resident program that overrites the memory address, where the bios got copied in the RAM upon startup , although you have to do it yourself or look for it yourself… I dont want a 900 pound gorilla chasing my ass ...

OK, so disbale the partseal app, and then use a standard upgrade XP Retail and it will work???  WOw, that’s so simple. I’ll give that a try on my TR1A when I install my new HD

It makes me mad when Sony blatantly advertise their support of XP all over the place, and then make it impossible for users to upgrade their machines.

Do you know if Sony use a similar trick on all their models to identify and link machine and restore disk set. If so I am certain someone has already wrtten a utility and I sure would like to find it…........ KNow any places to look?

What about the TR1MP? I did not have any problem at all to install XP pro on it… should i have had ? ( waou, is that a good english sentence :oops:  :wink: )

The main problem is upgrading from the installed Home version of XP to XP-Pro using an XPPro upgrade or retail disk.

The upgrade with the MS XPPro disk starts OK but goes to a blue screen about 60% through the process and the machine just keeps rebooting

But its quite easy to do a clean install of XP Pro from a retail disk, providing you unpack the driver and some of the lib files of the restore disks.

JA

that’s what i did… worked great (even though i had to look up for some drivers…now it s all allright