Transfering bits of the registry to new OS

jellyfish · Post by **jellyfish** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 3:11 pm

I recently installed windows server 2003 on a new hard drive of mine and so now i have two operating systems (xp pro aswell)...anyway alot of the programs i use on my win xp won't function on my win 2003 system, i've come to the conclusion that it's because i needed to enter in software keys on the programs and/or register them online to activate them.

anyway I don't know much about the registry and i was wondering how i would go about copying the needed software keys from my win xp one and transfering them to my win 2003...it's not a simple matter of just entering in the serial or anything.

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 3:13 pm

How did you copy the software to the new OS, did you install it, or just copy the folder? Since if you installed it and it does not work, then I don't think you can do anything, it's just not compabible.

But if you know which registry keys you need you can simply go in regedit, export them, then import them into the win2003 registry.

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jellyfish · Post by **jellyfish** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 3:31 pm

basically my win xp along with the programs are all on the C drive and my win 2003 is on the F drive when i logged onto win 2003 i just went back into the C drive and double clicked on the .exe program file for what ever program it is i wanted, some work and some don't.

It's not a question of compatibility, as the main program i want to work is visual studio .net which i know is compatible with win 2003, also photoshop wouldn't open and dreamweaver was saying something about a trial...

I'll try the whole exporting and importing thing, i just wasn't sure about what exactly need moving registry wise as i don't know much about it...

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 3:52 pm

Oh ok so yeah it is a registry issue. What you could try though is to reinstall the programs on top of themselves which will just overrite the same files, but also create the registry entries, and the entries should remain in the other windows installation as well. Programs like photoshop don't really store anything in the program file folder other then custom palettes which should stay there anyway when you reinstall, but backup just in case.

It's probably easier then trying to figure out what reg keys to grab. In most cases there's multiple keys all over the place.

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jellyfish · Post by **jellyfish** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 4:23 pm

grabbing the reg keys seems to have done the trick!

thanks for the help

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:3165, old post ID:25866

Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 5:17 pm

Glad to hear it went well. I guess there's not as many of them scattered all over as much as I would have figured.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:3165, old post ID:25867