Installed Programs not working

[Mountain Man]

Hello, I was having trouble with my XP64 hard drive booting up so I replaced
it and copied everything from the old drive to the new drive and I can "see"
all my old files and programs but, none of them work? Must I re-install all
(some programs I purchased online) or, is my registry "bad" or corrupt? I
re-install XP64 think it would "find" and re-install the programs that are on
the hard drive (they are not gone, just not working) but it did not work.
Thanks in advance!

 

[Big_Al]

Mountain Man said this on 3/11/2009 6:08 PM:

Hello, I was having trouble with my XP64 hard drive booting up so I replaced
it and copied everything from the old drive to the new drive and I can "see"
all my old files and programs but, none of them work? Must I re-install all
(some programs I purchased online) or, is my registry "bad" or corrupt? I
re-install XP64 think it would "find" and re-install the programs that are on
the hard drive (they are not gone, just not working) but it did not work.
Thanks in advance!

You cannot copy programs to a new system. You have to install them from
the original media, like the MS Office CD's.
You can copy files you created and in some cases with enough hunting you
might get a few configuration items moved, but those take a bit of work
and are usually easier to just re-do.

You can get cloning software like Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image
Home that will copy the old drive to the new drive, but if you are
having boot issues due to software, all that would do is replicate the
problems but on a newer drive. If it was a bad HD, and you can get a
good clone copy, then you would be fine.

 

[Gerry]

Big_Al

What you have said was my understanding until recently. I did a new Windows
XP Home installation on a new drive. With one programme I have there is a
support contract and to be sure I got it right I called support. They told
me to copy the programme from the external drive to the same position in the
folder structure on the new drive and it worked. I still do not understand
why but this is an exception to the general rule.

--


Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Nate Grossman]

They told me to copy the programme from the external drive to the
same position in the folder structure on the new drive

WTF does that mean???

 

[Big_Al]

Nate Grossman said this on 3/12/2009 2:43 PM:

WTF does that mean???

It probably means you copy
X:\program files\xxx\folder\*.*
to
C:\program files\xxx\folder\*.*

and all sub folders too.

I'm guessing, but I have a whole folder C:\programs on my drive with
about 20 subfolders in it. One of the programs is 'autoruns'. It
takes no installation. You download it and put it in a folder. Thus
this entire folder "programs" can be copied from my thumb drive to a
newly formatted drive and bingo they all work. I've just learned over
5 years of collecting utilities which don't need to be installed thru
trial and error.

 

[Gerry]

Big_Al

You've understood my message correctly. Perhaps for better clarity I should
have said the folder containing programme and data files. The folder is at
the same level as Programs but all contents relate only to the specific
programme. The bonus was getting the database and history without using any
import feature or the like.

I had noticed that Autoruns is an oddity but had not really thought about it
as falling into this category.


--


Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~