Some programs will just run if you navigate to them in your old windows area and double click the exe. The ones that don't will have to be reinstalled. After you have installed though you can usually data settings from the program files folder (or app data folder) and replace it back where it should be and the program will be just as it was before.
You could also doing an in place upgrade from your old version on windows. You can upgrade to the same version of windows you are on and all it does is replace all of the windows files for you leaving all programs working as they were before.
1THe fix for this is to create regular backups. Just re-install them. Messing with them to get them to work will take you longer than re-installing. You will have licensing problems, you will have a ton of registry problems... it all depends on the application and most of them will not work correctly without a re-install. – Logman – 2013-08-04T23:31:47.243