Moving software from an old machine to a new machine with windows 7

dolly7

Distinguished
Aug 25, 2011
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Hello,

I have software on my old XP machine that was originally downloaded, no disk. I use it all the time. It is no longer supported by the vendor and a download is not longer available. Is there anyway to transfer it to my new Windows 7 machine?
 

COLGeek

Cybernaut
Moderator
It really depends on the application, but without the original installation files, it is VERY difficult.

What sort of applications are you referring to? Keep in mind, if they are fairly old (sounds like they are) they may not run on Win 7.
 

11796pcs

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Jan 3, 2011
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I would assume you're talking about Office and maybe a few games. As far as Office goes, MS isn't made up of a bunch of idiots (well I guess maybe their marketing team) so they make it close to near impossible to copy Office from one machine to another. I would suggest you just use OpenOffice or LibreOffice if you need something like Office- they are fantastic programs and I have used them before with success. Some things are moved around and you may not have 100% of the features of Office but they do their job well. As for games, unless you saved a disk image of the game disk or something you're out of luck. I believe any program that uses the Windows installer modifies your registry and makes it impossible to just drag-and-drop the program later to another PC. There are programs that don't require an installer though like Prime95 and GPU-z. If you have any programs like those you should have no problems running those on your new Windows 7 machine if they're supported.