Two hard drives - problem accesssing programs

rpcrowe · 20 Jul 2010

I recently switched from an older Dell Optiplex 785 computer to a screaming new Gatewat FX6831-01 with a 1.5 GB hard drive. My technician removed the 500 GB hard drive from the Dell and installed internally in the Gateway as drive "E".

I am totally confused and bewildered...

It was my understanding that I could still access and run the programs which were installed on the "E" drive. However, this has not been the case. When I try to access my Photoshop CS3 which is on the E drive, I am told that:

"Licensing for this product has stopped working
You cannot use this product at this time. You must repair the problem by uninstalling and then reinstalling this product or contacting your IT administrator or Adobe customer support for help."

The problem is that I need to have Photoshop open in order to uninstall it. I must insert the disk into gthe compter and then uninstall the program. This will allow me to reinstall the program. Otherwise, it is a dead program because I can only have it running on two computers. Unless the disk knows that I have uninstalled it, I cannot reinstall it.

I also cannot run any of my other programs such as legacy, Portrait Professional and others off of my E drive.

Was my technician mistaken in thinking that I could run the programs off the E drive. he is on vacation and I cannot contact him.

If he was not mistaken, how can I run the programs?????

Arc · 20 Jul 2010

Found a previous conversation about it. Posting the link, it may help you .

How do I install and run programs from a 2nd hard drive? (More details inside)

TVeblen · 20 Jul 2010

Yes, it sounds like your tech was mistaken.

If the drive the programs were installed on was E: on your old Dell it might have worked, but still doubtful. I assume both computers were running W7?

The Windows registry is chock full of keys that link the installed program to the OS, and vice-versa, and by moving the location of those programs you are dead in the water.

You either must install the programs fresh, or go through the hopeless task of redirecting the OS to the new program locations through line-by-line registry editing (not guaranteed to work anyway).

Snakeyeskm · 20 Jul 2010

All you can do with your transferred drive is to access any data that might be located on that drive. installed software will not work (with very rare exceptions). To reinstall your Photoshop should be fairly simple. Go to your old drive and find the installation of your Photoshop in program files. Either delete or, copy to CD and delete, the appropriate Photoshop folder. Since the program was not installed on your new computer there are no registry entries to delete so there is no need to use any uninstallation software. Once you have deleted the folder, try re-installing the software on your new computer.

One important suggestion. Before reinstalling any of your old software, I would copy any important data files from your old drive to your new drive and then completely reformat and clean out your old drive. This would prevent any confusion when installing software that might still reside on your old drive.

Best of luck