[Cd-r Track Info]

I need to know if there's a way to put song info (like CDDB has on CDs) onto a CD-R so when I burn it, I have the song titles, artists, etc. stored away for later. That way if I need to rip the CD-R, it automatically knows the songs. Is this possible?

Yes, it is called CD-TEXT. Not all burning software supports this, and those that do sometimes have limited support (such as a complete disc title / artist). Not all players support it, either.

[Hard Drive Upgrade On A "system Restore" License]

Thanks for the suggestions, folks.

OK, the target drive is an Hitachi drive, so I used their utility rather than Norton Ghost.

The system will now boot, and much of the software is functional, but there are still issues.

I had to reinstall Pinnacle Studio 9+ (a video editing suite), and after reinstall it is working fine so far.

iTunes will run, but does not use its icon for any shortcuts (desktop, taskbar, etc.), so its registry or something is corrupted?

Several other programs also seem to have lost their logo icons, like iTunes, but many are OK.

But the most serious issue is with Microsoft Office. I have Office 2003 Teacher - Student Edition installed. I bought this program at retail, so I have a full license original CD.

All office programs have lost their logo icons on the shortcuts, and all office documents have lost their logo icons. However, the file associations still work (i.e. double clicking on a .doc file will attempt to start Word).

But, when the application starts (Word for example), the windows installer runs, but never actually does anything. If I cancel the install, I get a couple of error dialog boxes, and then the application will start and apparently run normally.

When I try to do a repair install of Office using the original CD, the setup program from the CD refuses to run.

It would seem to me that something in Windows is very sick for the setup / installer for Office to not even run.

Apparently, something has been corrupted (possibly in the registry, or in the Windows Installer files or registry entries), but without an original Windows CD (remember, I have the infamous "system recovery" CDs from HP - and HP customer service is no help whatsoever - they just tell me to recover the system back to three years ago), I can't to a repair install of Windows.

Any help?

PS: I'm willing to actually buy the upgrade version of XP Home, but only if that would actually help. As fussy as Microsoft has become with upgrades and activations, I am concerned the upgrade version would merely tell me I can't upgrade from XP Home to XP Home and refuse to do anything.

My Windows installation is still recognized by the Microsoft Update Service as fully registered and legal (which is good, since it is fully registered and legal).

[Hard Drive Upgrade On A "system Restore" License]

Well, you can "ghost" all of your software and files. Do the sys restore and get the updates. Then install all the rest.

The system recovery starts over with a clean hard drive, as near as I can tell. IOW, after the system recovery, the only software and data on the hard drive will be what the machine came with out of the box. This is not the same as the Windows restore point. The recovery CDs contain a copy of the original hard drive image (sort of) and they restore the hard drive to that condition.

[Hard Drive Upgrade On A "system Restore" License]

I have a 2 1/2 year old HP Pavilion, HP Home Edition, P4 2.5GHz machine. It came with a utility to burn "System Restore" CDs, plus a "System Restore" partition on the hard drive (drive D).

I want to upgrade to a larger C drive, but I do not want to start over with 2 1/2 year old OEM software.

I have tried using Norton Ghost to replicate the existing hard drive onto the new drive, but it will not boot, with Windows giving a license violation error (can't remember the exact message).

I emailed HP support and they say the only thing I can do is a System Restore on the new hard drive and start over with Windows updates, installing all of my software, etc.

I do not want to do that, since I have some applications that were activated by the vendor using their online activation service, but that vendor has now gone belly-up. This would mean I can't reload those apps. Also, given the amount of software I have loaded and upgraded over the years, recovering from the system restore will take several days, at least.

Question: Can I purchase a retail Windows XP Home Upgrade package and "upgrade" the copy of Windows on my new hard drive, and activate it using the license code from the retail box? Or, will the upgrade software in Windows refuse to upgrade an existing Xp Home system?