Thanks for the suggestions. I can access the hard drive that crashed...all of the data is there...its just that xp wont boot on that drive...i get the windows screen and then it reboots.

The problem i thought I had was you just cant copy a program file and run it on a new computer...it has to be installed through the setup file.

Since I didnt have the install disks anymore I thought there might be a way to migrate the program along with the windows settings to allow it to run.

But as an afterthought I just did a copy and paste from the old hard drive to the new.

I then double clicked the program...and windows 7 took awhile but to my amazement the program worked. I just had to reinsert the key.

The program is a data mining program for poker sites.

Thanks again

Problem solved

Rick