Is this normal? System not identifying programs installed on external drive.

[RmeNayv]

I am running 64bit Win 8.1. I replaced my internal HDD awhile ago with a SSD as the boot drive. My HDD is docked via USB 3.0 as an external (permanent) drive. Since upgrading the drives I have reinstalled and refreshed Windows multiple times. (I am screwing around with he configuration and it doesn't always work out, I'm sure you can relate.)

As you would expect I used the HDD to install most programs. After reinstalling Windows the first time I expected these to be gone. They were not which is why I am here. Some file paths were wrong after re-sizing partitions, some couldn't find associated files after the Windows resets and restores but they are still here. At first I was manually correcting the programs unable to launch, after awhile I simply started to reinstall them. I've got a lot of utilities, free-ware and major programs here, some four or five time now. I have lots of storage but at some point this is just stupid. I would love to get rid of these but can't really figure out how. I know that some of these utilities are probably portables and that is why they have no problem launching back up but others are eating space and really inflating the registry. Based on disk space and it also seems like offline versions of my cloud drives are in multiple locations but I cant find them.
--- Main Question---

I can't seem to find an uninstall program that can locate these programs. Revo Uninstaller shows 54 programs installed. When I go into Add/Remove it lists 85. My Uninstaller (freeware not actually mine) shows 124. Windows index search hardly turns up anything which only makes me more confused as I have it set to index through the sub-folders now. I realize that I could go through Program Files and manually remove everything but I may have waited too long for that to be practical.

There are still programs I want on that drive that I have not reinstalled. If anyone could answer any of the following questions, or all, I would really appreciate it.

1) Why is this happening?

2) Best way to detect and remove programs that are not showing up? (I've actually used dupe guru, which does its job great, to find duplicates folders and than open the file location but that takes forever.)

3) Anyway to find and re-associate installed programs other than manually?

4) Why is this happening? I know it is probably something simple I am overlooking but I am overlooking it nonetheless.


Thanks in advance. I appreciate it.


Edit

Disk Management shows the external as four NTFS partitions, all healthy, all primary partitions. These have been re-sized since my first reinstall. Speccy shows all drives in good health.

 

[Andrew Murdoch]

I personally have always found Windows to get messy when you start using drives that have previously had installs on them without formatting inbetween.

I suggest you systemically clean out your system, save what you want and format a partition at a time. It would be best to do a clean windows install on the SSD also.

Please go into disk management and mark only the SSD as the Primary partition. They should all be Active but only the Windows boot drive should be Primary.

 

[RmeNayv]

I personally have always found Windows to get messy when you start using drives that have previously had installs on them without formatting inbetween.

I suggest you systemically clean out your system, save what you want and format a partition at a time. It would be best to do a clean windows install on the SSD also.

Please go into disk management and mark only the SSD as the Primary partition. They should all be Active but only the Windows boot drive should be Primary.

Thanks, I was afraid of but expecting that. Any chance all those primaries have been behind a whole lot of system32 corruption?

 

[Andrew Murdoch]

It certainly wouldn't help.

You could always set them properly then try running the System File Checker to see if it fixes anything for you.

You do this by running cmd and then sfc/scannow

 

[RmeNayv]

It certainly wouldn't help.

You could always set them properly then try running the System File Checker to see if it fixes anything for you.

You do this by running cmd and then sfc/scannow

Yeah, I've been running SFC and DISM fairly often lately. With back to back scans the first will come up and clean and the second will find corruption. Those partitions have probably been active since I moved the OS to the SSD. If that is the problem I need to fix it. DiskPART won't let me set them as inactive, it only works on MBR partitions. Is there another way r to I need to dig up some migration software and move things back and forth?

Thanks Again

 

[Andrew Murdoch]

Regardless of what you do with the HDDs, I would advise backing up and doing a clean install on your SSD.

From the clean install you can then drag over the programs you want and add the necessary registry entries or run the installers and point them to where the program already sits. As the registry and your mbr are probably a mess this would be the least stressful option, imo.

 

[RmeNayv]

Regardless of what you do with the HDDs, I would advise backing up and doing a clean install on your SSD.

From the clean install you can then drag over the programs you want and add the necessary registry entries or run the installers and point them to where the program already sits. As the registry and your mbr are probably a mess this would be the least stressful option, imo.

I'll do that, thanks.

 

[Andrew Murdoch]

Please let me know if I can assist you further