Help! Windows 7 installation problem

[timw86]

Hey all. I've recently installed windows 7 on a partition of my hard drive, drive c. But most of my programs were installed on the other partition, drive d. It was my first time doing a windows installations, when I installed windows 7, I reformatted my drive c because i wanted a clean install, but I forgot to back up the drive or create restore points.

So now, all of the preferences, desktop layout, star menu shortcuts I had were all gone. Those didn't bother me too much because I can just redo them. But the most annoying thing is that all the programs I had installed in drive D no longer appear in the "programs and features" panel so I cannot uninstall or do anything to them. The programs themselves work just fine. I realize this probably has something to do with the registry. Like when I reformated drive c and installed windows, all of my registry values were erased or changed.

The only way I know to fix this problem is just to manually delete all the programs on drive D, or just reformat the entire drive, and reinstalling everything. But I really prefer not to do that if I can help it because I have sooo many programs on drive D.

My question is, is there anything I can do to fix this, maybe go in to the registry and type in some values, so the computer recognizes the programs as being installed?

Thanks so much in advance!

 

[edmond419]

Don't delete the programs in drive D. Just navigate to their folders and create shortcuts to them.

Keep in mind some of them might not run. Create a list of those that doens't run, delete those and reinstall those (Make sure you have the original installation before pressing the delete key!!)