Can u transfer installed programs to a another hard drive, then transfer em back?

Question

My computer will soon be heading to gateway so my motherboard can be fixed. I want to take the installed programs on my hard drive and transfer them to another pc. Then when my pc finally comes back from gateway i want to transfer the programs back to the original pc. Can this be done? Would it be a good idea or just not worth it.

Answer 1

I wouldn't even waste my time sounds like a big hassle for just a few weeks. Just get whatever you need to tide you over til you get it back. Whatever you do if you don't want your hard drive formatted make sure you state that in big bold letters in your letter when you send it in, believe me I worked at gateway service department for 7 years and if things were acting up or we couldn't get the system to pass our checklists we were definitely encouraged to reload the hard drive instead of doing any software fixes unless it was stated in there letter.

Answer 2

Assuming you have a Windows box, the answer is: probably.

You want to transfer software to another pc. You may or may not be successful depending on what software we're talking about. Some software, like Microsoft Office and antivirals, install themselves into several directories, where some of them are also system files. You will probably think that copying C:\Program Files\WhateverSoftware to another pc is OK but that is not enough because you will not have the the chance to find out some system files the software probably installed -because they are not in Program Files, but somewhere in Windows\System32 folders or similar-. There's also registry entries that the software uses to remember your settings, which is also very hard to retrieve.

What I'm saying is that it is a very, very hard effort to try to copy an already-installed program into another system; there are lots of files put in different folders inside your pc. But if you have the "setup executables" or the "installer" for those software then you can copy your documents and those installers to another system and easily install the software back when your pc comes back.

Answer 3

when you install software (most of the time) it updates the window's registry. So just copying the program files folder will not make the software run on the other harddrive. You will have to reinstall the software...... before you send your computer off make sure you have a backup of everything you want to keep (any files that you have created). They may not be there when you get your computer back.

Answer 4

It is possible it would have been dependent upon your applications being installed within a virtual application environment. However since this may not be the case for you, you could create an image of your harddrive using Norton Ghost or any other imaging software. Please note that these tools create an image of your entire harddrive and not just certain applications so when you do run the image, it will restore the entire contents of your harddrive.

Answer 5

If it is possible for you to take out your hard drive, do that, otherwise you could create an image of your drives (using Norton Ghost or some similar software) on a disc or external hard drive then restore that when you get back your computer.

Answer 6

You could take out the hard drive like thor level4 said or you could back up the partition to another hard drive you have to buy a software called Image for windows it cost about $30.00 believe me it is Worth every Penny I have one when any thing goes wrong on my computer I could restore the in tier partition in about twenty minutes.

Answer 7

Why don't you just take out the hard drive before shipping your computer to Gateway?

Answer 8

You can not do that unless you have the orignal cds for the programs in witch case when you get your computer back you just install them again, if they came with the computer preinstalled, all you have to do is install the restore disk.