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Installing programms on a different HDD

  • 07-04-2011 11:45am
    #1
    clivej
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,072 ✭✭✭


    My PC (XP pro - SP3) went belly up after downloading a torrent file and I'm just reinstalling XP now.

    What I wanted to know is - if I had installed all my programms onto a different internal HDD would I still be able to use them or would I have to reinstall them all again like I'm having to do now?


Comments

  • #2
    ART6
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,632 ✭✭✭ART6


    More usually you would partition the primary HDD with the OS on one partition and everything else on the other. You can set that up when reinstalling the OS. Shouldn't be any problem with putting your programs on a separate internal drive provided it is set to "slave" using the jumpers on the back. As an example, I have often run rarely used programs from an external Western Digital backup drive when I didn't want them cluttering up my main drive.

    To run your programs you would need to click on the drive you loaded them on and then select the ones you want. That way the OS knows where to find them. You could also, if you wanted, set up icons for the programs on the desktop by selecting the program you want and selecting "Create Shortcut", then dragging the shortcut to your desktop. In some cases Windows will tell you that it can't create a shortcut in the original program folder and will ask if you want it on the desktop instead.


  • #3
    FSL
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,456 ✭✭✭FSL


    Unless the programme was totally self contained, in as much as nothing was installed to any of the operating system folders and no entries were made to the system registry, then yes you have to reinstall them.


  • #4
    clivej
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,072 ✭✭✭clivej


    FSL wrote: »
    Unless the programme was totally self contained, in as much as nothing was installed to any of the operating system folders and no entries were made to the system registry, then yes you have to reinstall them.


    It was this that I was mainly refering to. I think most all programms install something to the drive that the OS resides on so with a format of that drive I will loose all the porgrammes anyway. Is that correct??


  • #5
    ART6
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,632 ✭✭✭ART6


    clivej wrote: »
    It was this that I was mainly refering to. I think most all programms install something to the drive that the OS resides on so with a format of that drive I will loose all the porgrammes anyway. Is that correct??

    If you format the OS drive then yes, you would probably lose access to some or all programs wherever they were located because they need to access registry entries, and there won't be a registry entry for them when you format and re-load the OS. Some programs have "Windows shared" files too. However, if you format the primary HD and load the OS on it, then load your programs onto a slave HD the programs should update the registry on the primary as they look for where the OS is located. That's what works for me:)


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