I have had to buy a new h/drive as my current one is getting noisy and programs keep locking up. If I install the new one as master and the old one as slave and do a fresh install of xp on the new drive,can I then copy files and programs from the old drive to the new one? Is it as simple as right clicking and sending then chosen file to the new drive? I do not want to ghost the drive as some things are not running as well as they should.

Yeah, providing you install everything correctly. You should be able to just click and drag the things you want. <><><>Tope<><><>

No, the programs that require DLLs will not work if transferred that way. Most new drives come with software to make an image of your existing drive, to a new drive. OS, progs, settings, everything. If your system is running well right now, you might want to do things that way. If, however, your system seems to be sluggish and bloated, you may want to do as you wanted to do originally. Data files will copy and paste just fine and some small applets may work without a re-install, but things like MS office, hardware drivers, settings will have to be re-installed. If you do transfer files, don't use cut and paste, use copy and paste. If the transfer goes bad, you will not lose your data.

As OtheHill writes, it doesn't work that way with windows programs as they also install files into the windows folders and register themselves in the registry of windows. As you will never find our which is copied there you can't do it by hand. But there maybe a solution: You can try to copy the program folder (all subfolder included) to exactly the same place it was before (same drive letter - same folder and subfolders). Then do a new installation into the same folder. If it still doesn't work copy the program folder again. If that doesn't help (with some programs this works with some not!) deinstall the program and then delete the program folder before doing a new installation. If you have stored your workfiles into the programfolders find the folder where it's stored and copy them to the new installation.

what i did... I bought a new hard drive 120 gigs (yeah thats sweet) anyways I made a partition (d:/ --> most hackers look for C:/) just for windows xp and some programs so the computer runs and loads smoothly... then I started my pc with my old hard drive and formated the other pice of the new hard drive as a disk E:/ so I had C D and E. I copied all my programs from ( pograms: files, mp3s, vids, etcs... cracks...) C to E and then I booted up from D:/ (which I had already installed win XP) and then I just formated C cause I didnt need it anymore and ended up having D:/ just for win xp files E: for my old files and stuff I wanted to keep and C:/ a whole drive just for nothing (filling it out with whatever I wanted) I worked for me I hope it works for you