Question
I have a small business and my laptop is getting old. The POS software that I use for all of my accounting and database management doesn't exist anymore. The company went out of business so there is no hope of getting another copy of my software. I back up the data everyday, but the data is useless without the software. How can I transfer the program to another computer hard drive and still have it work? I have tried this several times using the backup function of the program, but when I try to open the program on the new computer there are files missing so it wont run. If there is a way to copy my HD so that my program will work on another computer PLEASE help me! I do not have any disks to re-load the program because it was an online downloadable program so there never were any disks.
I have a small business and my laptop is getting old. The POS software that I use for all of my accounting and database management doesn't exist anymore. The company went out of business so there is no hope of getting another copy of my software. I back up the data everyday, but the data is useless without the software. How can I transfer the program to another computer hard drive and still have it work? I have tried this several times using the backup function of the program, but when I try to open the program on the new computer there are files missing so it wont run. If there is a way to copy my HD so that my program will work on another computer PLEASE help me! I do not have any disks to re-load the program because it was an online downloadable program so there never were any disks.
Answer
Unfortunately with Windows there are only 3 ways you can do what you want... 1) Install the software on your new PC. Can't do that because you have no install medium. 2) Duplicate the whole hard drive onto a new disk (using any partition manager software) which will duplicate the OS, the video drivers, the sound card etc etc etc. So you'd end up with a cloned disk drive... and you'd have to upgrade that disk to suit your new PC and new OS. It's a slog and a pain and doesn't get you a nice clean OS with nice clean applications. It also ties you to using an OS that the application will work under... so if it was a Win95 app you may find it won't work with XP or Vista or the next app on. Or it may not work on the next file system layout. 3) Work out exactly what files are needed and what registry entries are needed and copy them over to the new PC. Alternatively, can you export your data, reformat it to suit a currently available package and switch packages? Or pay a developer to write a program to get the data out and into a new application. Or maybe you can find someone out there with an install set for the product... someone may have kept the installer download rather than just using it to install from and then deleting it.
Unfortunately with Windows there are only 3 ways you can do what you want... 1) Install the software on your new PC. Can't do that because you have no install medium. 2) Duplicate the whole hard drive onto a new disk (using any partition manager software) which will duplicate the OS, the video drivers, the sound card etc etc etc. So you'd end up with a cloned disk drive... and you'd have to upgrade that disk to suit your new PC and new OS. It's a slog and a pain and doesn't get you a nice clean OS with nice clean applications. It also ties you to using an OS that the application will work under... so if it was a Win95 app you may find it won't work with XP or Vista or the next app on. Or it may not work on the next file system layout. 3) Work out exactly what files are needed and what registry entries are needed and copy them over to the new PC. Alternatively, can you export your data, reformat it to suit a currently available package and switch packages? Or pay a developer to write a program to get the data out and into a new application. Or maybe you can find someone out there with an install set for the product... someone may have kept the installer download rather than just using it to install from and then deleting it.
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