How to transfer a discontinued program to a new computer

Just install it using the same installer as you did last time. That could be a disk you bought, or something like a setup.exe or thisprogram.msi that you saved to the hard disk (and included in your regular backup, so you were sure not to lose it). That's what we backup for, don't we, to not lose things that we might need later.

For some programs it suffices to just copy the subfolder in Program Files to your new PC. That works, for example, for Microsoft Photo Editor, Eclipse (comes a zip-file), Warcraft III, Gyula's Navigator, Komposer, WSFTP. But there are a lot of programs it doesn't work for. Just try and see.

Kees

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Answer Best answer as chosen by user Clovisrex

Copy the .exe file

by susanrokita - 8/29/12 3:29 AM

In Reply to: How to transfer a discontinued program to a new computer by Clovisrex

When you originally downloaded the program, the installation file may have been copied to the "Downloads" folder in your computer directory; check there. Look for a file with a name similar to the program name (it may be abbreviated) which has an .exe extension. Copy this file to a thumb drive or CD or DVD, then to the new computer, then double click, and it will begin the installation of the program. Remember that some programs will not work on a different operating system (Windows XP versus Windows 7, for example). I had that problem with a program that came with my old video camera, when I bought a new Windows 7 laptop . It would work on XP but not Windows 7. I solved the program by removing everything from the old XP laptop except the video camera program, and used that laptop exclusively for that program. It was less trouble than partitioning the new laptop.