Two hard drives running XP pro

Lupylu

I have just upgraded my sisters pc, I have installed a new 80 gb hard drive with windows xp pro, I have also left the original 30 gb hard drive installed, also running xp but only sp1. ( for some reason she couldn't update.) I originally was just going to do a files & settings transfer, but I wondered if there was anyway I could run & access programs from the original hard drive, by maybe creating shortcuts or something. I have tried to search, just keep getting info on doing a dual boot, but that isn't what I want to do. I can switch between the two by going into bios, is there a better way? Any help would be great, Thanks

pattie

Hi
Set your main drive as master, by putting the jumper as per instructions on the drive and your second drive as slave. The second drive should show up in my computer on the master. You should be able to access all files on that drive. wether you can run progs or not is something to try. If you can then a shortcut should work.
Hope this helps

tigermatt

You will find that some of the more simple programs will work fine on a different drive, but more advanced programs (Microsoft software for one) will have created registry entries as gizmoleeds said so they may not work.

tigermatt

logo and an obvious description (eg. word)).

Microsoft Word's executable is called WINWORD.exe

intel

You can try this it worked for me..

Create a new shortcut to word on your desktop and poit it to the
files on the other drive...

Right click desktop, new shrotcut now navigate to the word icon called
winword, and that will then open word from the other drive.

Blackjack_Davy

Lupylu wrote:

I have just upgraded my sisters pc, I have installed a new 80 gb hard drive with windows xp pro, I have also left the original 30 gb hard drive installed, also running xp but only sp1. ( for some reason she couldn't update.) I originally was just going to do a files & settings transfer, but I wondered if there was anyway I could run & access programs from the original hard drive, by maybe creating shortcuts or something. I have tried to search, just keep getting info on doing a dual boot, but that isn't what I want to do. I can switch between the two by going into bios, is there a better way? Any help would be great, Thanks

Your post isn't very clear but has your new hard drive replaced your original drive i.e it's now the Master boot drive and your old drive is the slave? Or is the old drive still the Master?

If the new drive has replaced the old i.e it's the master then unless the programs are very simple ones you can't just create shortcuts to them on the 2nd (old) drive as the registry entries etc won't exist.

Personally with my 2 hard drives I keep all the installed programs etc on the 1st hard drive and all my data, documents, files, backups etc on the 2nd hdd - so if the OS won't boot for whatever reason I can format and reinstall/restore OS backup on the 1st drive and all my data is still safe on the 2nd.

tigermatt

On second thoughts you may be able to reinstall the programs to their old location on the old disk because it may preserve settings files etc. and it will create registry entries on new installation of XP. It may work or may not so I wouldn't recommend it.

Some programs also have a repair feature which will start when you first run it should it find missing registry entries etc.

Lupylu

Hi all, Thanks for all your helpful replies.
Well I could shortcut to some of the more simple programs, as suggested but beyond that wasn't great. I ended up doing a files & settings transfer. The transfer completed, but as there was no reinstallation of the original programs it really didn't help. I am now thinking of doing a complete format/fresh install of xp on the 80gb and transfer/install everything manually. Norton ghost sounds like a great plan too but the xp sp2 issue is quite a problem. I have tried many ways to upgrade to sp2 on the original 30gb hdd, to no avail. So my sister purchased a new xp pro sp2 disc for the new 80gb hdd. Is there any way that I would be able to create an image & transfer to the new hdd without affecting the new sp2?

albertross_2

No.

Why don't you use one of the imaging freebies, copy the 30GB image to the new disk, take out the 30GB disk, and post details of your original problem with SP2. Or if you know the details of the SP2 issue, post to see if anyone knows the answer before you start.