Hard drive swap question
 

Long story but here it goes.

My notebook has dual drives.

C drive has Vista Ultimate installed but I do not have the install disk. Bought it used with no disk.

While installing SP1 the system crashed with an unrecoverable error, googled error and found that many have same problem - MS says reinstall operating system is the only answer.

So I installed a copy of Home Premium on the other hard drive and all is up and running including SP1. Apparently there were some incompatible drivers on the old install. Updated all drivers from toshiba's site and that fixed it.

So here is my problem. I can recover all my data off the old drive since there is a windows error not a drive error. The issue is my software which came preinstalled and I do not have any activation keys to reinstall on the new c drive.

I have tried every free key finder I could find and none will read any software keys on the second drive, most have detected both Window install keys. Some reviews have specifically mentioned that the key finder will detect the keys to Alcohol 120% for example but I can not get it to work.

Is there any way to run software installed on a previous C: drive that is now recognized as E: ?

Anyone use a key finder to successfully detect keys on a slaved drive? I would really like to keep and reinstall all my old programs that need product keys.

you can find them in the registry, as decoded registry entries.

perhaps i am misunderstanding your question. are you needing keys, or are you trying to run the software from the other drive, such as MS Office that was installed previously, for which you don't have the installation CD?

Both.

For example, I have Office '07 installed with no disks. Alcohol 120 installed with no record of the key to redownload and reinstall.

you are going to have major problems with that because the installs add registry keys and dll's, among other things.

did you try reinstalling your new copy over the old installation?

This is the error !!0xc01a001d!!

I am getting a copy of Ultimate from a friend to attempt a recovery or reinstall over the old OS.
Word on google is that recovery attempts do not work. In the past I have had stacking errors when I tried to reinstall XP without a format. Is this still a problem with Vista?

I suspect you're going to be screwed. Usually if you reinstall over another install, you loose the info in the registry that's required to run previously installed software. Good luck.

its been my experience that the registry is spared, but not always. thus, it sometimes works. i wouldn't hold my breath, but it is worth a try.