I have formatted my hard drive and reinstalled Windows XP

[Omega Man]

This is the question I have regarding the programs and files on my old hard drive:

If I import documents and settings I know I will have my Explorer favorites and documents imported. What other "settings" would be imported?

I have several computer programs that I have downloaded off the Internet. How do I reinstall these programs? I know of at least one company that has gone out of business and I will not be able to get a copy from them. It is still on my old hard drive.
I have 2 hard drives. I rebuilt on the second, and my first hard drive still has all of my programs on it. Most of my programs have been installed on the new drive from CD-Roms. If I understand correctly I can not just use explorer and drag a program over.

[Confused]

If you have the source that you downloaded you can drag it and then install on new system.

But you are correct in that you cannot drag a installed program over and have it run. It must be installed on PC it is going to run on in order to have the registry entries.
Chas

[doctorgonzo]

Some programs may work if you just drag them over. These are typically very simple programs that just consist of an executable file.

However, this won't work for most programs. When you install them, they add DLLs to various folders, add registry entries, associate themselves with filename extensions, and do other things. You need the actual installer program for this to work (which is why I tend to keep the installation programs for things I download if there is any chance that I might not be able to find it in the future).

Depending on how much work you want to undertake, you could copy registry values over, try to find the DLLs, and so on. I have done this once or twice and usually cobbled enough together to get things to work. There are absolutely no guarantees, though, and as always, if you mess with the registry you can seriously break things.

One thing you might want to think about now that you have reinstalled Windows is ghosting your drive. Once you have Windows configured how you want and you have all your apps installed, ghost your drive. That way, if you ever need to reinstall, you can just use the ghosted image and you will have everything working as it was before, with no need to reinstall programs.