Trouble w/ Office 2000 after HDD upgrade

[Alexman1513]

I upgraded my computer to a bigger HDD.  I copied the files from the old drive but they don't work.  I had to reinstall Windows, Explorer and lots fo drivers for modems and display etc.  Office 2000 programs don't work and neither do a lot of other programs like AOL and ACT.  I get two different messages both along the lines of "Program is not installed properly or you need to install from the original location".  

Because I reinstalled Windows (Win 98 SE)  I lost all the upgrades, drivers, preferences and improvements I had downloaded from MS website.   I'm worried about losing all the same things from other programs. Office 2000, ACT 6.0, Quicken 2000, Turbotax and all the preferences etc. that go along with them.

How can a person add a new HDD and copy all the stuff without all these hassels?  Maybe there is some  kind of software that knows where all the files for each program are stored and moves them to the new drive in the right directorys so they can be found.  

Computer is 1.7 GHZ Pentium 4, 512 MB Ram,  2 HDD (Both IDE/ATA) - 30 GB (old drive) - 80 GB (new drive),  CDROM, Best 56K modem, Nvidia graphics card and Sharp LCD.   display.  

[Raptor]

How can a person add a new HDD and copy all the stuff without all these hassels?  Maybe there is some  kind of software that knows where all the files for each program are stored and moves them to the new drive in the right directorys so they can be found

Most programs allow you to export their databases and saved files for use on another system and then it is a matter of simply importng the database again.

How can a person add a new HDD and copy all the stuff without all these hassels?  Maybe there is some  kind of software that knows where all the files for each program are stored and moves them to the new drive in the right directorys so they can be found.  

That will be difficult without directly looking at it, you might want to E-mail the software companies that you purchased the software from and ask them that question. Usually finding the files is not too difficult, they should be under the program folder and will most likely be carrying the name that you gave them when saving your work. What you can try to do is copy the entire program folder and put it under your new installation of Windows, but I can't guarantee the programs will actually still work afterwards.

If you do not have two PCs in your posession try mounting them both in the same system as Master/slave.

The only exception I can make is for Office; it most likely saved all your documents under "My documents".

[patio]

The only way this would have worked was if you would have cloned the old drive to the new drive as is...you cannot simply "copy" a program's files on to a new build and expect it to run.
If you haven't wiped the old drive yet then simply hook it up again, format the new HDD, and then boot the machine using the CD that came with the HDD and there will be an option to clone your old drive to the new one.
After that simply remove the old one and hook up the new one as master and you should be good to go...

patio.   8-)