After making new SSD my Bootdrive, Programs on the HDD won't work

[Wondering]

So today I did this:
1. Turned my PC off
2. Uninstalled my HDD
3. Installed a Kingston 240gb SSD
4. Installed Windows 10 on said SSD
5. Reinstalled HDD
6. Made SSD Bootdrive

Unfortunately, now all of the programs on the HDD don't work (except for Steam for some reason). When I go into the files and try to open the executables, they either say it doesn't exist or just nothing happens. How do I fix this? And do I need to remove Windows 10 from my HDD?

Additional Questions: There is no way for me to clone it all over. My HDD has 830gb of data on it and the ssd has 240gb. So a few questions:

1. Why does Steam work when no other program does?
2. Is there any way to import the old registry into the new?
3. If I do have to reinstall a bunch of programs, would I be able to port the data from the programs over from the old to the new (ex. uplay games to reinstalled uplay or nexus mods to reinstalled nexus mods manager)?

Also, do I need to delete windows 10 from my HDD?

Posting on here because I have also asked on Tomshardware but it was suggested that someone here might know why Steam works when nothing else does, would love to have a solution to my questions.

[CrazyDave]

Set your HDD as slave and the SSD as primary. You will have to set the pins on the HDD to slave. Also set the \bios to reflect the same change.

And yes do a fresh install of windows to the SSD, But back everything up first.

[PirateGary]

The programs will only work to the OS they wwere installed to, I almost positive. The only way to get everythingto work is to reinstall or clone the HDD to the SDD then upgrade to 10, I'm sure it may be the only way. The old programs were installed on a different OS, different Registry and that in itself is messy to fix, you can move data but programs write files all over the place during install. I'm assuming the OS was different but even if not the install of programs were to a different drive location than where they are now, example C:\PGM not D:\PGM so when you got to execute them they are looking on the current C:\ not D:\ I suspect you did a new install of Steam instead of copy it to C:\? I had the same upgrade about 9 months ago and Cloned my HDD to the SDD and it worked fine there was no jumper pins on my HDD the MB has disk 0,1,2,3,4 connectors that identify what and where they are. Havent seen jumper pins in ages. The old boot HDD I ws told to make it so it could not boot by accident but as the Bios tells the system what device to boot from first and C:\ was it.

[Wondering]

Originally posted by CrazyDave:

Set your HDD as slave and the SSD as primary. You will have to set the pins on the HDD to slave. Also set the \bios to reflect the same change.

How do you set the pins to slave and do that in bios? I have never heard of that before. Also, I did do a fresh install of Windows 10 to the ssd, thats the problem. I have windows on the ssd like I wanted but now the programs on the HDD don't work right.

Originally posted by PirateGES:

The programs will only work to the OS they wwere installed to, I almost positive. The only way to get everythingto work is to reinstall or clone the HDD to the SDD then upgrade to 10, I'm sure it may be the only way. The old programs were installed on a different OS, different Registry and that in itself is messy to fix, you can move data but programs write files all over the place during install. I'm assuming the OS was different but even if not the install of programs were to a different drive location than where they are now, example C:\PGM not D:\PGM so when you got to execute them they are looking on the current C:\ not D:\ I suspect you did a new install of Steam instead of copy it to C:\? I had the same upgrade about 9 months ago and Cloned my HDD to the SDD and it worked fine there was no jumper pins on my HDD the MB has disk 0,1,2,3,4 connectors that identify what and where they are. Havent seen jumper pins in ages. The old boot HDD I ws told to make it so it could not boot by accident but as the Bios tells the system what device to boot from first and C:\ was it.

Both OS's are the same version of Windows 10. I had upgraded from 8.1 to 10 on the HDD way back and I did a fresh install via the iso file on a usb for the SSD. No I did not do a fresh install of steam, it repaired itself somehow and that's part of what confuses me because no other program will do that. Is there any way to fix the registry by importing the one from the HDD to the SSD?

[rotNdude]

Steam works because it keeps the game directory as a repository. Other Windows apps have all sorts of registry entries that can't easily be changed without reinstalling the app.

[initiaLiSeD]

You probably have to reinstall them all.

[Wondering]

Originally posted by initiaLiSeD:

You probably have to reinstall them all.

I was trying to find some easier way to do it, but it looks like that way is either nonexistant or too complicated for anyone to explain to me. I've reinstalled the most important ones at this point anyway.

[DarskX]

Might of been easier to backup all files on the HDD to an external drive, then shrink the main partition down until it will fit onto the ssd drive. Then clone the hdd partition to the ssd , while keeping all the installed programs intact. Macrium reflect free is one I would recommend to do this kind of thing.

Guide here; https://youtu.be/QwBdbhqtjA8

[Gus Tarball]

Because you didn't clone the original operating system to the new drive. Not doing that means the Registry file no longer can tell the operating system important infomation about the programs you have on the other drive.

You will have to put the old SSD with the OS back in the system, set it to be the boot partition and then clone it an empty partition on the new SSD. Then you can remove the old SSD and boot from the newly cloned partition while keeping as many finger and toes crossed as you can muster.

Basically you screwed up and would be better off just re-installing all the programs that are on the non-OS partition rather than trying to repair what you've just done.

Steam works because it makes no major changes to the Registry.

Copying the registry files over to the new OS install will reeeaaalllly screw up your OS install. Don't do it.

[Wondering]

Originally posted by DarskX:

Might of been easier to backup all files on the HDD to an external drive, then shrink the main partition down until it will fit onto the ssd drive. Then clone the hdd partition to the ssd , while keeping all the installed programs intact. Macrium reflect free is one I would recommend to do this kind of thing.

Guide here; https://youtu.be/QwBdbhqtjA8

Thanks, I had heard of this before, but don't have a an external drive to backup my data. Will definately be using this method next time though, didn't realize the way I did it would end up like it did.

[Wondering]

Originally posted by Gus Tarball:

Because you didn't clone the original operating system to the new drive. Not doing that means the Registry file no longer can tell the operating system important infomation about the programs you have on the other drive.

You will have to put the old SSD with the OS back in the system, set it to be the boot partition and then clone it an empty partition on the new SSD. Then you can remove the old SSD and boot from the newly cloned partition while keeping as many finger and toes crossed as you can muster.

Basically you screwed up and would be better off just re-installing all the programs that are on the non-OS partition rather than trying to repair what you've just done.

Steam works because it makes no major changes to the Registry.

Copying the registry files over to the new OS install will reeeaaalllly screw up your OS install. Don't do it.

Thanks, this is the info I was looking for, for some reason nobody wanted to tell me that I can't import the old registry or why.

[DarskX]

Originally posted by Wondering:

Thanks, this is the info I was looking for, for some reason nobody wanted to tell me that I can't import the old registry or why.

There are some older programs like erunt that can used to backup the registry, but I have no idea how well it would work on win 10.

In your case it would be better just to reinstall all your programs, or see if the old HDD works as primary then try and clone that again. Either by backing up any data to an external drive, or see if you can create a new partition on the hdd if there is space, then just clone the OS partition.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/erunt/

[Bad 💀 Motha]

The only things really that can work are Steam & Games from Steam serivce.
Any other Windows apps, you must reinstall those, as they will now lack any existance of being known to the OS via the lack of registry entries that occur upon installing something.

Steam all u need is the old Steam.exe and run that as admin; then verify your games and all of Steam + Games will work. Upon running the Steam.exe on a new WinOS will redownload the entire Steam Client Software all into the folder where the Steam.exe resides and is run from.

Now that your OS is fresh, you do have work to do, regarding installing any apps you want, as well as needed Windows Updates, Hardware Drivers (from their sources, not via WU) and much needed plugins that a fresh OS will need, such as (but not limited to) dot-NET Framework, Visual C++ Runtimes and DirectX Runtimes.

Not to mention, configuring your new OS for use with an SSD, such as setting the PageFile to a locked min/max size, ditching the Hibernation file, and disabling SuperFetch and WindowsSearch/Indexing.