I have an HP Pavilion 740N-running Windows XP Home Edition. I added a hard drive to the system and a special track ball that I need. I had some driver problems, which caused my system to fail to boot. The only way I could get a bootable system again was to use the 7 recovery disks that HP provides which puts the system back to the way it was from the manufacturer. Unfortunately, I had to disconnect and/or remove the hardware that I had added and I also had to, of course, reinstall all the programs not installed from the 7 disks. Can I upgrade the system to Windows XP Professional? Is there anything I have to do differently since it is an HP system? If I try to upgrade to XP Professional will I be able to keep my desktop, start Menu,Programs menu, and installed applications in tact? A friend tried this and lost some of his Programs Menu shortcuts. If I successfully upgrade to Windows XP Professional, can I use that disk to recover the system instead of the original 7 disks from HP?