The Shrine

A while back when i had to install win2000pro on a newly bought HD i decided i may as well partition the HD and put windows on one half and all the programs and data on the other half just in case i had to format and reinstall windows in the future.

Well, low and behold my windows kept giving me tons of errors and trouble lately so i reinstalled it on its parition. While my data on the other side of the HD was kept intact, none of the programs work. I guess when you install them (even when on their own partition) they are linked to the windows side?

Is doing this partition thing only supposed to preserve data, thus it worked the way it should have, or should those programs work with the new windows?

There are lots of reasons why that wouldn't work...many programs install DLLs (dynamically linked libraries, files that must be present for them to run) in your Windows directory and when it's reinstalled they're not there, but that's only one reason and I really don't want to get into all the other reasons because it would just get me all worked up against Gates/Ballmer/et. al. this morning. Generally with Windows there will be many programs - not all, but many - that will be "tied" to the operating system installation they're installed on.

The data thing is fine, as you've found out, and when I've partitioned my hard drives for Windows in the past I've had a separate data partition. However, you can't really separate programs and operating system installation on Windows.

Gates is on record as saying "Any programmer who's not any good in the first year will never be any good", which in light of stuff like this is actually pretty funny. I have had a desire lately to find that guy who hit Gates with the pie and do a repeat of the scenario, but I somehow doubt it would do any good.

Another thing is the registry. You lose all of your configuration data, and most programs will lose their "install" when you clear the registry.

Might as well install XP on the thing. It's a bit more stable that 2K. Either that or experiment with Linux. (I really like Ubuntu.) Depends on what you're going to use the PC for.