How to register installed programs after os install?

Question

I always install my programs on my d:\ drive while my OS is installed on c:. I do this to be able to quickly reinstall the OS while any other software is still available.

After reinstalling the OS, there is obviously no registry entry for the already installed programs. Is there any option to re-register these programs? Or is there any way to export the necessary registry entrys before reinstalling?

Best regards, Zapp

Answer 1

Very often a program will do far more than just copying files to \Program Files when installing. There could be many hundreds of registry entries, and even shared DLL files and such installed within C:\Windows somewhere.

It is very rare you can just copy a program from one computer to another (which is essentially what you are doing by wiping and reinstalling windows) and have it work.

I know it's a pain, but the most sure-fire way of making sure everything will work properly will be to reinstall your programs.

Answer 2

some casual program can work this way but many program will become unstable on this type of configuration. And many programs will even refuse to work this way so the best practice is to reinstall all the program again.

Answer 3

You can use some registry manager and make two registry snapshots before and after installation of a program, then compare them and build .reg file that will make necessary changes. I use RegOrganizer for that, it can track changes in both registry and filesystem. Of course, it's easier to reinstall complex programs like Microsoft Office than move all necessary files and registry entries manually. Also, many programs store user settings in %appdata% so I always make copy of that folder before reinstall.