I have windows professional on my computer.  I want to reinstall windowsxp home edition.  what steps do I need to do.  Thank you very much.   Jo Anne

   Put the XP Home CD in the CD drive and follow the instructions.

Ray can I install another Windows xp home over the windows xp professional even if the professional one is bad.  Will I have to reinstall all my programs that I have on the old program.  I got to the page on the set up trying to do this and it gives a caution: Installing multiple operating systems on a single partition is not recommended.  To learn more about installing multiple operating systems on a single computer see http://www.microsoft.com/windows/multiboot.asp.  This confuses me more.  Sorry I am not very familiar with the operating system part.  I saw on another quesion you had said to put it in the same place as the other operating system.  Thank you very much.  Jo Anne

   Yes, you can install XP Home over XP Professional even if XP Professional is bad.  You need to install it to the same directory as to where XP Professional was (this will probably be C:\Windows).
   By operating system it means Windows.  If you replace the old Windows with the new Windows, there will not be multiple operating systems on one partition (in other words, two Windows on one drive) because you will be replacing the old one with the new.  If it is telling you that you will have multiple operating systems, you must not be installing it to the same location as where the old one was.  This is also called Updating.  You want to select Update (if you are given that choice) even though you are really downdating.
   When you Update, the Windows installation program will try to repair whatever was wrong with the old Windows and incorporate the settings into the new Windows.  If it is successful at that, you will not have to reinstall any of your old programs.  If it is not successful, you will have to reinstall everything.