program on laptop needed on desktop but no longer have program disk

[brit54]

I have a good working financial program on my laptop that has been there for a few years. Now I want to put the same program on my desktop. I no longer have the original program installation disk or access to the original installation data through any other sources.

I have a new USB connector external hard drive I use for backups on both PC's, and can and have easily backed up the program from my laptop onto the external hard drive.

However, the program contains a number of DLL files so I don't believe I can simply copy the backup from the external hard drive onto the desktop because it won't really be 'installed' into the registry.

My OS is W98SE on both systems and the laptop is a PII while the desktop is a PIII.

How can I make the program function on the second machine (the desktop)? Must I research all the program's original registry settings on the laptop and duplicate them in the registry of the desktop? If that's the only way, it seems like a daunting task.....Any suggestions would be appreciated. I have never undertaken such a challenge as modifying a registry in this fashion ! I'm hoping there's an easier way.

Peter
Tucson, AZ

 

[vbrocks]

Usually applications have the same date for most of the files, perhaps you can search for all the files with the same date and copy them over, and give the program a try. Another solution would be to get a laptop hard drive adapter and install it on your desktop with the laptop drive. A simpler solution would be to search the internet for the same program, buy it, and install it on your desktop.

 

[brit54]

Thanks for your response. I'm sorry but your message is somewhat obscure. Can you be a little more clear/fundamental in your suggestion please? Thanks in advance.

Peter

 

[edfair]

You could also clone your drive and install the clone on your desktop, clean the inevitable hardware problems up, then reload the desktop programs.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[diogenes10]

Hi Peter:

Comments for your consideration:

The feeling that I have is that vbrocks last suggestion about searching for the program (or perhaps something similar) would be the least risky to your data.

After reading your post a couple of times there are two other alternatives that occur to me. I have no idea if they would work-In my mind they would come under the heading of experiments.

The FIRST and most IMPORTANT THING i would do before trying anything:
Registry entries like you discussed, File copying like vbrocks discussed, or other ideas,
is to CREATE RESTORABLE IMAGES OF BOTH HARDDRIVES so that when (not if - when) I screwed something up (remember these are experiments), I could get my systems back to the current "working well" state. Assorted threads discuss/recommend Powerquest drive image and Norton Ghost for this purpose. I believe later Ghost versions have the ability to image across a network, if this is so, you would not have to remove the laptop drive to image it. (At least for an initial backup of the system as it is now. You may need to remove it to do option 2 below.)

Possibility one:
There are utilities that purport to be able to extract an application from a windows installation and transport it to a new windows installation. Success is likely to be iffy ??? Other posters may have comments here. I have an old McAfee product Uninstaller Version 5. I have used it to copy 2 old Dos financial applications which I run under Win98. I have not used it on a full fledged windows app and dont know what success it would have there.

A second possibility:
If you have copies of all the programs on your desktop and backups of all the data, you could try copying an image of the laptop drive to the desktop drive and seeing if the desktop would boot, run, and you could reinstall all the desktop applications on top of that windows install. And then restore all the data files from backup. This would basically be the same as trying to move the harddrive from the laptop to the desktop.

The process of trying to move the C: harddrive that boots the computer from one computer to another has been discussed in other threads-and again success is iffy.
I can't remember all the specifics, but basically you try something like uninstalling all/most devices on the drive while it is in the old system, move it to the new system, boot it up and hope windows will recognize all the new hardware properly and keep on going. My thought is, you could try uninstalling stuff on the laptop and shut it down.
The drive image programs boot from dos, so then you could boot up the laptop drive, create the image, and then transfer the image to the desktop drive, and try from there.
(The advantage this offers over leaving the laptop drive in the desktop is that you dont have to buy another harddrive for the laptop. I'm not sure if you'd have to move the laptop drive to the desktop to get this image file.)
If the desktop drive booted up and ran from the image of the laptop drive, you could then reinstall all the desktop apps and restore the data file backups.

Good luck with your project.

 

[brit54]

To: diogenes10

many tx for your comments I sincerely appreciate it.

your 1st possibility - utils avail out there - intrigues me the most. Other than your old McAfee product Uninstaller Version 5 that I don't have and is probably no longer available anyway, can you suggest where I might look for similar programs? (Unless of course you want to lend me yours....

Peter
Tucson, AZ

 

[ANFPS26]

You might check eBay and see if you could purchase a copy.

Jim

 

[ANFPS26]

I meant the financial program (or the utility).

Jim

 

[diogenes10]

I don't know where to look specifically, no.
I came up with this quickly on a search

http://www.aladdinsys.com/easyuninstall/comparison.html

I'm not able to invest a lot of time in searching right now and I can't get a good keyword or phrase

uninstaller basically picks up stuff to just erase files and clean up the drive, archive picks up file compression stuff. Hunting I would consider three things:

1> I would go to some freeware/shareware sites and just wade through listings of file and disk utilities and see if I could find something to try.

2> I would go ahead and try some google searches on stuff like "archive files", "transport files", "move files to another computer" and just wade through 20-30 pages of hits and see what I could find-looking both for software and clues for other keywords to search on.

3> I think -but am not absolutely sure- that there was a thread awhile back where this topic was discussed and there may have been 1 or 2 programs mentioned. Forum and date unknown. Given what I watch, my candidates would be 95-98, gen hdwe, or hard disk. I might try some advanced search, or just scanning back threads.

Sorry I can't give you more specific help.

 

[diogenes10]

Was in my Office Depot at lunch-saw ontrack systemsuite on the closeout shelf. (they sold easy uninstall to aladdin)
Found following comments-you can find more of these types of things and make your decisions from there.

My opinion-the process is rather like removing a parking decal from the windscreen, it's one thing to get it off, it's another to get it off in a condition it can be put in another car.

Norton:

http://www.epinions.com/content_8669990532

http://www.epinions.com/cmd-review-7E2C-3A7F51A6-3A2FCE7E-prod3

http://www.epinions.com/content_42558197380

http://howto.lycos.com/lycos/series/1,,10+59+26168+25622,00.html

SystemSuite

http://www.epinions.com/cmd-review-657F-8767859-38FDD32F-prod1

Cybermedia/McAfee

http://www.epinions.com/cmd-review-63A0-1AC57CE7-39CAC8C8-prod6

http://howto.lycos.com/lycos/series/1,,10+59+26156+25492,00.html

 

[wolluf]

brit54 - before getting complicated, obvious thing to try is copy the 'program file' (or wherever it is installed) folder from the laptop to the desktop. Try running the app.

If you get missing dll message, it should tell you which one. Copy that from laptop to desktop (\windows\system folder) and try again. After a number of iterations you should pick up all the missing dlls.

At this point (or possibly at the beginning), you will find out if you need specific registry entries (the program will still not run for one reason or another - eg, missing regsitration details). If this happens, look in registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE and see if there's an entry with the name of the software/its manufacturer. If there is, use regedits export oprion to export the branch - copy it to desktop and import it, and try again.

My main point is - it might just work.