Migration of programs between XP x86 computers?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Alan Bunting
  • Start date Start date
A

Alan Bunting

My father is running an (extremely) old Medion desktop running Windows XP
Home Edition SP2. The thing takes forever to boot up and it just outright
doesn't seem to like him very much. So, I am planning to set aside some hard
disk space on my HP desktop under another user account for him to use. The
problem is, he uses a lot of downloaded software that he needs to migrate.
Is there any way to move programs from the Medion to the HP without having
to produce install disks and/or installer files (and keys!) for each and
every program? I expect it isn't possible through XP itself - at least, not
easily - so is there a transfer program that would do the job?
 
Alan Bunting said:
My father is running an (extremely) old Medion desktop running Windows XP
Home Edition SP2. The thing takes forever to boot up and it just outright
doesn't seem to like him very much. So, I am planning to set aside some hard
disk space on my HP desktop under another user account for him to use. The
problem is, he uses a lot of downloaded software that he needs to migrate.
Is there any way to move programs from the Medion to the HP without having
to produce install disks and/or installer files (and keys!) for each and
every program? I expect it isn't possible through XP itself - at least, not
easily - so is there a transfer program that would do the job?
Click to expand...

You can most likely copy these programs across without having
to re-install them. Problems may arise if they use DOS functions.
Windows XP won't tolerate those.
 
Alan Bunting said:
My father is running an (extremely) old Medion desktop running Windows XP
Home Edition SP2. The thing takes forever to boot up and it just outright
doesn't seem to like him very much. So, I am planning to set aside some
hard disk space on my HP desktop under another user account for him to
use. The problem is, he uses a lot of downloaded software that he needs to
migrate. Is there any way to move programs from the Medion to the HP
without having to produce install disks and/or installer files (and keys!)
for each and every program?
Click to expand...


That won't be possible for most applications. They'll need to be
installed on the second computer using the original installation media in
order to create the many (possibly hundreds of) necessary registry entries,
and to place the many (dozens?) of associated files into the various Windows
systems folders.

I expect it isn't possible through XP itself - at least, not easily - so
is there a transfer program that would do the job?
Click to expand...

There are 3rd party programs that claim to do this. I haven't tested
any of them, so I can't say how well they work. One is LapLink's PCMover:
http://www.laplink.com/pcmover/

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