Hard drive from dead computer - list of installed programs?

[GorillaMan]

I've had a major hardware failure on my laptop (aka wine-glass accident), but fortunately the hard drive is OK. (I do of course have regular backups anyway, in case you were wondering. :p )

To be honest, it had had a good life anyway, surviving two-and-a-half years of beatings, droppings, being thrown into cars, and at least one other drink spillage *ahem* I mean hardware near-miss, the latter causing the fan to do a good impression of a small 1970s car on an incline.

What I'm wondering is if there's any way, from the data on the hard drive, that I can retrieve a list of installed software, similar to that which would have been given in "Add/Remove Programs". When I get a replacement, I'd like to get all the genuinely useful free bits and pieces which I had acquired installed on that straight away.

Thanks!

[Duckster]

If you can plug the hard drive into a working computer, download Belarc (http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html) and see if it reads the hard drive. (I'm not betting it will.) Unless there is something better, then you will have to manually inspect the drive for all installed apps.

[EasyPhil]

You could find a used version of your laptop and just plug your hard drive in and you would be good to go.

[GorillaMan]

You could find a used version of your laptop and just plug your hard drive in and you would be good to go.
Yes, but I don't think that'll happen - it came from a small manufacturer that's since gone bust!

[ZipperJJ]

For the most part, installed programs each get a folder in C:\Program Files. This isn't going to show you stuff like Firefox add-ins or anything, but it's probably the best list of apps you'll be able to find when just reading a disk without access to the OS GUI.

[CookingWithGas]

I'll second using Belarc Advisor, but you'll probably have to boot up to that disk for it to work properly. I'm not sure how the internals work but I'm guessing it looks at the Registry, not just what's sitting on the disk.

[gaffa]

You should be able to use the hard drive as the boot drive in a desktop if you configure it as Primary Master and make sure the real Primary Master is unplugged. Start it in Safe Mode to stop it from trying to install all the missing hardware.

[EasyPhil]

You should be able to use the hard drive as the boot drive in a desktop if you configure it as Primary Master and make sure the real Primary Master is unplugged. Start it in Safe Mode to stop it from trying to install all the missing hardware.

It will more than likely not boot and "blue screen" due to the IDE controller being different.

[Quartz]

The simplest way is to look under c:\Program Files and catalogue what's there. However, a better way might be to put MS Virtual Server or VMWare on another machine and boot that HDD into a virtual session - in safe mode.

[gaffa]

It will more than likely not boot and "blue screen" due to the IDE controller being different.
Really? I've done it many times. Dead laptop, remove drive, attach to laptop IDE to full size IDE adaptor, boot, profit! And IDE controller set to Auto is an IDE controller. The drive is recognized, the boot sector is recognized, the OS boots.

[DrCube]

Can't you just put it in a 2.5" hard drive enclosure (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817816002) and boot off of it? Or if your BIOS won't boot off a USB drive, just open C:\Program Files.

I have one of these (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812195005) for checking if random (2.5", 3.5", SATA, IDE, even optical) drives work and getting data off of them.

[si_blakely]

If you can hook up your laptop hard drive to a running system (via a USB-IDE adapter), you can open the registry hive of the laptop using regedit, and then find all the Add/Remove Programs entries in the registry.

Si

[ftg]

(Ahem, this is assumming the OS is Windows XP. Cough.)

Booting a HD from one computer onto another computer is not so straightforward. The "hardware abstraction layer" (HAL) is probably different, esp. if you are going from a laptop to a desktop, etc.

Read more about it here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/824125

Secondly, the laptop OS is probably an OEM-tied version which won't allow a boot of the OS on a machine significantly different from the one it was installed on.

I'd completely ignore the "boot off of it" advice if I were you.

[GorillaMan]

Can't you just put it in a 2.5" hard drive enclosure (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817816002) and boot off of it? Or if your BIOS won't boot off a USB drive, just open C:\Program Files.
It'll boot in the laptop, but the USB ports are playing up now as well - Windows can't see anything plugged into them, even though Ubuntu has found the keyboard and mouse. :confused: Mind you, I had already been getting stop errors when unplugging USB mice....

On preview, si_blakely's idea sounds good, because I'll have a complete copy of the C: drive on a working machine already and so can pry into the registry with ease.