Upgrade

I am contemplating about upgrading or getting a new computer, faster ,
bigger drive. My problem is some of the programs I now have on the present
computer I don't have disks or floppies for them. Can I backup or copy these
programs to a CD and transfer them to a upgraded or a new computer. I prefer
to upgrade as the operating system would be WINXP SP2 rather then OEM. I
know an OEM setup would not be able to accept such an approach, would WINXP.

Can anybody help.

There are third party applications that claim to do this, but I would not
trust them to transfer anything beyond the very simplest of programs. The
application may not find all the parts of the software (including registry
entries) and it may not know where to put them in the new computer.

There is no such thing as 'Windows XP OEM'. The version of Windows installed
by your OEM is the very same Windows you can buy at the store. To upgrade
Windows to SP 2, visit Windows Update.

The easiest and fastest thing for you to do is to clone your hard disk to
the new computer. There are a few caveats to observe e.g. doing a repair
install to update the HAL, re-activating Windows, but you can find piles of
'how-to' information on the internet.

--
Ted Zieglar
"You can do it if you try."

"sed--cid" wrote in message
...
I am contemplating about upgrading or getting a new computer, faster ,
bigger drive. My problem is some of the programs I now have on the present
computer I don't have disks or floppies for them. Can I backup or copy
these
programs to a CD and transfer them to a upgraded or a new computer. I
prefer
to upgrade as the operating system would be WINXP SP2 rather then OEM. I
know an OEM setup would not be able to accept such an approach, would
WINXP.

Can anybody help.