Is it possible to move a program from one drive to another?

[jimpl]

 I just put new hard drives in my laptop and installed windows xp pro. If I get an enclosure for the old drive, so it can be used externally, can I move programs such as AutoCad to the new drives?
  Jim

[socrates]

You can find programs out there that will move your applications settings/preferences over to the new hard drive, but you will have to manually install each application using the disks/downloads they came from.

I could be wrong but I'm not aware of any applications that will move your applications over from one pc to another, due to legal reasons.

Your other option, though, would be to use the old hard drive as an external, like you said, and just run those applications off of that drive.  The applications will load slower, but it would work.

[soybean]

Your other option, though, would be to use the old hard drive as an external, like you said, and just run those applications off of that drive.  The applications will load slower, but it would work.

He would still need to reinstall those applications.  Otherwise, Windows won't know, in it's registry, where the program files are located.

[socrates]

That's right.  I apologize.

I made the switch to mac at home and have been using only a mac for my personal computing at home, and have only been using windows when helping people fix technical issues.

Got the two confused... on Macs you can drag applications back and forth and even run them from another drive without registry worries (no registry to worry about)

[jimpl]

  Thanks up front for your input, but now it seems it's a moot point.
I bought an enclosure to connect my old drives in and it sees the old slave drive as a completely blank drive.(without the jumper)It won't do anything when I put the jumper on.
 It sees the old main drive as unallocated.
     Jim

[patio]

If it is a USB enclosure here's what you can try:
Unhook it.
Boot the machine a few times and power down.
Set the jumper on the drive in the enclosure to master.Don't connect it yet.
Power up the machine and let it finish running all the startup apps. Connect the USB external and listen for the dong.
After that right clik My Computer and select Manage...then Disk Management. See how the external is reported there under Properties and report back.