Installing a program from program files

I had to perform a drive swap so that my old installation of windows 7 and all my programs are on one drive, and my current installation is on the other. I would like to know if there is a way to get all of those programs on my current installation, and also recover my preferences, start menu etc.
Specifically when I try to run word or excel I get the message "the Operating system is not currently set up to run this program"
If anyone can help me that would be great, I don't care even if I have to dive into the to fix this but please someone help

Welcome to Windows Seven Forums.

I don't want to give you wrong advice, but I'm fairly certain that unless you cloned the old drive onto the new one you'll have to re-install all your programs on the new hard drive.

The reason you are getting the message you quoted is because it'll be a system registry issue i.e. Windows on the new hard drive can't see Excel on the old hard drive.

What happened was, my old motherboard died, so I upgraded that and the processor, but this caused my existing windows installation not to boot, so I cloned the boot drive onto a partition and overwrote the existing installation with a new one. I stated this in my first post but due to a typo it didn't come through, I don"t mind diving into and modifying the registery if i have to. so somebody please help me regardless of complexity

If you want an honest answer, it's probably not what you want to hear, but with a motherboard change you're best to carry out a clean install of Windows.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/20082..._easy_way.html

Clean Install Windows 7

I did a clean install of windows
i know for a fact that it has to be a way to modify the registry so that my programs work

In that case, I'm afraid I can be of no further help.

I've had my fingers burned in the past by messing with the registry. :)

Is there a way I can view the old registry?

I honestly don't know.

You'll need to wait for someone more knowledgeable than me to chip in.