Cloning An Installed Program?

[chane]

I have a valuable program on my laptop that I want also want to have on my desktop pc. The problem is I don’t have the original installation CD and no downloads of it are available either.

Is there any free or inexpensive software that allows me to make a clone of the program directly from my laptop’s hard drive so I can then copy of it onto a flash drive and then load it onto my desktop?

 

[Fardringle]

Many programs put files in various locations on the hard drive and entries all over in the Registry. Without knowing exactly where these files and Registry entries are located, there's no way to move an existing installation of an application. What program are you trying to move?

 

[Nothinman]

There were installation monitoring tools that would supposedly let you clone installations by watching all of the files and registry keys created during installation, but they were never very reliable and required you to do the install fresh at least once which isn't an option for you.

 

[bruceb]

What program and what company wrote it ? ?
It may still be findable.

 

[BTA]

There's always the slow way.

Copy the installation folder to the Desktop and try to run the program, if you're lucky it will work, if not, it may error out saying "unable to find blahblah.dll"...so you go search for blahblah.dll on your laptop, note what folder it is in, copy it to the same folder on your desktop...rinse repeat. Also sometimes helpful to find the registry entries for the program, if any, and export that, then merge on your desktop.

Have fun.

 

[yinan]

Without the install media, the easiest way I can think of is to virtualize your desktop and run it as a VM on your laptop overkill, but easiest way to ensure that it will work.