THe drive I want to use as slave is faulty (windows immediately logsoff after logon - the problem does not seem to be the common one associated with the files wsaupdater.exe and userinit.exe) but will work as a slave drive.

If I format an old hdd drive with XP and use that as the master drive will the programs/games/applications still work or would these need reinstalling on the master hdd.

If the programs won't work is there a way which is easier than digging out / borrowing all the cd's to reinstall????

Thanks in advance

I did that number of times. Only on Win98.

This is very painful and time consuming process. What you need to do is setup new hd as slave, copy complete contents to new disk and switch disks (ther settings, that is). There is only 1 problem. (if you're using XP). There will be files (windows used ones) that you will not have access to. Therefore, if you have a day or 2 then you will have to write down on a piece of paper name and path of every single file that you cann't copy. It prompts you and stops the copying process every time there is access violation. That is most painful with the "System32" folder for there are ~2000 (~4000 incl. subfolders) files and most of the used ones (read: most copying interupts). After (a lot of time and after) you're done with copying you will have to go to hard part. That is boot from winxp install cd, select -r and manualy copy the remaining files.

Maybe you should just put the new drive in as a slave.

Atleast for starters.

The answer is yes - but more practically - no

It can be done, however - the process is more time consuming than Charky mentioned. Every program creates registry entries when it is installed - that gives the file path. You would in effect have to go to every single program on the slave HDD in the registry, and edit it to show the correct file path. If it is on a fresh install, it woul mean knowing what and where each of the entries are, and adding them by hand....the easiest thing is to just re-install the program(not to mention, safest - as it keeps the end user well away from the registry )

Registry editing woul be unnecessary, because among the files copied do the new hd would be ones that contain win registry. (windows\system32\config\*.*)
All paths would be correct because C drive (old) will become D drive and D drive (new) would become C drive.