Upgraded to Windows 7, lost office programs

Hello all,

I just upgraded to windows 7 from vista by using my university student license that was available to me. I used the clean update, meaning I cleaned off the partition, instead of keeping all my old programs. When I bought this computer, it came with the office 2007 programs and no CD, so now I have no way of re-installing Office.

I noticed that there is a folder called Windows.old which has my office programs, however if I try to open them, it says that the current OS is not configured to run this program.

Is there any way to transfer my old programs to work with windows 7?

sangwoo said:

Hello all,

I just upgraded to windows 7 from vista by using my university student license that was available to me. I used the clean update, meaning I cleaned off the partition, instead of keeping all my old programs. When I bought this computer, it came with the office 2007 programs and no CD, so now I have no way of re-installing Office.

I noticed that there is a folder called Windows.old which has my office programs, however if I try to open them, it says that the current OS is not configured to run this program.

Is there any way to transfer my old programs to work with windows 7?

I am pretty sure if you have a windows.old folder you didnt do a clean "update". Did you actually format the partition?

Windows.old usually results from using the "update" feature. You may be able to import you settings by using the easy transfer wizard.

Let us know if you need help

Ken

The windows.old folder appears whenever you installed a custom installation from your previous version of windows. It is a custom installation. It is simply that all the older files are moved to this folder and windows 7 is installed anew.

Your product key should have been on a specific file in your microsoft office program files(x86) folder in the windows.old folder. I'm pretty sure that somebody on this forum can help you figure out what this specific file is.

The Windows.old folder will contain some files that you used in Vista. However, to use programs in Windows 7, you must reinstall these programs in order to associate with the file system and with the registry. Moreover, the product key is not stored in a readable form, you need a key finder program to retrieve it. But i'm sure even that will find the key only for installed programs.

The only way I can think of is to restore vista from the windows.old folder onto another hard drive. See this tutorial.

Windows.old folder - Restore into a new installation

Once that is completed successfully, hopefully Office 2007 will be functional again. Then, use a keyfinder program like Magical Jellybean to retrieve your Office product key. If you are able to do that, then you just need to download your version of Office 2007 off the web and reinstall using the key you retrieved.

Tecnically you didn't "loose" the programs...

The new installation just changed the "program locations" and "registry" changes

you are going to have to reinstall the office cd to implace the files back to their original locations.

it is one of the downfalls to upgrading