Longer answer.
This never worked in Windows, maybe Windows 95 to some limited extent. There may be some software titles that 'say' they can do it, but they cannot. The task is too great and too complicated.
Observations;
1] Mirrored drives. I assume you mean RAID 0. Great for adding a little speed, but awful for 'piece of mind'. If one of the drives goes south you lose everything, at once.
2] Cloning. On a non-Raid setup, (I had Raid 0 myself and would never go back to Raid again), you can "Clone" the hard disk and save yourself this problem to a greater extent. Something like Clonezilla, or TrueImage
3] All of those downloaded software installer files, back them up to some other media. Also, screen prints of licensing, keys, and such, and back those up to other media as well.
4] Always backup, even with cloned drives.
By the way, this is the Forum Feedback forum. Not many visitors here.
Mark
Is there a program that will comb my HDD and find the existing programs, catalogue them, then create scripts to write the necessary registry entries and create the program listing and recreate my program directory that I once had before I had to re-install Windows?
I lost my system when my mirror drive decided to un-mirror itself, necessitating a total format of the drive, re-installation of Windows and salvaging of all my data from the "blob" of files (301.1GB for a 250GB drive) that my manufacturer assured their software would read. Yah, sure, you betcha it would. Not. So, I went in and plucked the folders and copied them one-by-one or as groups from the backup drive onto the HDD, but now am faced with the onerous task of re-installing the programs to make them work. Not a pleasant task, since many were programs that were downloaded from the web, and their manufacturers want $$$ for a new download. However, I already paid for a licence, and I'm not sure how to go about getting a replacement copy, because I can't find them in my download library...
Maybe it's just that the names are so darned obscure that I can't figure them out; that could be it, but I don't want to just start clicking on files and see what happens, either. That could have some seriously unintended consequences... And I could end up with something that I don't want installed on my HDD after all, then have to uninstall it, which is a pain in the patootie.
So: did anybody ever write a program like that? If not, why not? It could be a real moneymaker, given how many people I've run across who've had to reinstall Windows since this happened to me (and I made it 4 years and 11 months before it happened, and happened to have a really good backup in place, for a change).
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