My only available solution to fix a registry coruption was to reinstall windows XP home dition. Now My programs do not show up on new install but they are present and run from C drive. How can I reunite my old programs and documents and setting with the new install?

your lucky usually when you do a new install it overwrites the old document folder unless you have downloaded the exe files from the internet where you can run to reinstall programes all programes will have to be uninstalled and reinstalled so windows will know they are there so save as much data and settings before deleting as possible

Do you mean you did a repair install? Or did you just load xp on the same partition (called a parallel install) Some HELP in posting on Computing.net plus free progs and instructions Cheers

Guess it was just a parallel install

as far as I know, you will have to reload the programs and associate them with the files. Your best bet may be to save all your important files and then do afresh install. 2 OS's on one partition can be pretty unstable. Some HELP in posting on Computing.net plus free progs and instructions Cheers

"My only available solution to fix a registry coruption was to reinstall windows XP home dition" It wasn't the only solution...it was the solution you chose. You could have tried one the many registry repair fixes listed at Microsoft.com or simply performed a "repair installation" http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545 http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/... If you indeed have a parallel install on the same partition, I suggest you go with XpUser4Real's suggestion(s)....backup your important files, wipe the HDD & start from scratch. BTW, if you only have 256MB RAM, you should seriously consider an upgrade. 512MB should be considered the minimum...1GB (or more) would be better.