New OS Caused My OS Drive to Forget Where I Installed Things

[harrystam]

So...I know many people are going to jump and say "Well win 10 upgrades don't change anything"!

Well I didn't upgrade. I rebuilt my PC with a Ryzen 7 (which is only operable with win 10) Instead of breaking down my PC again I just clean installed Win 10. I didn't lose much on the drive, BUT! I forgot about my other 3 drives that I had installed things to. Now My C: drive won't recognize them and the install locations.
I'm hand picking the important items and linking them to my desktop.

Is there any more effective way other than filtering through every file on every disk to do this?
My C: drive also won't recognize the programs in my control panel to uninstall/change. I know I can go to the file location and uninstall, but this is a pretty time consuming problem non the less.

Thank you,
Harrison

 

[captaincharisma]

sounds like you had more then one hard drive connected during the new windows install

 

[Wolfshadw]

Even though you installed some programs on separate drives, some files are still written to the C: Drive (and the registry). When you reinstalled the OS, the links to those files were removed. Your only option is to reinstall those programs.

-Wolf sends

 

[harrystam]

It was a clean install. I had to reformat my entire drive. I don't know how anything would remain. Yes I did have my other drives connected, but I can still launch the programs from those drives. The programs aren't corrupt, they're just "disconnected" from my C: drive

 

[captaincharisma]

still there are most likelt disconnected because the registry is messed up. when doing a clean install you can't bring programks over to the drive like video or music files. or in your case leaving the programs on another hard drive. you will have to reinstall all your programs

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Of course, that would be the expected result.

1. You should always install anew OS with all other drives disconnected (Yank data cable)

2. This is how program installs work ... typically with a custom install ... say Adobe PhotoShop

a) When you choose a designated install location such as D:\Adobe\PhotoShop, most of the files will go in that folder.

b) Adobe and other manufactures use the concept of "CommonFiles". The thinking is if a suite of programs share certain features, as the programs in AdobeSuites do, then there is no sense installing these 5 times to install 5 programs. So it will put them in a folder for the sake of discussion something like C:\ProgramFiles\Adobe\CommonFiles. Now if you wiped C:\ to install your OS, these files are gone.

c) Your C:\drives also contains your registry and each (well most) programs make entries in that registry. You wiped out that registry and the new install of Win10 installed a new one which has no knowledge of yiur programs.

d) Your program launch icons are part of your user folder which is now all new.

To solve this problem,,,

Option 1- locate where all your programs are installed on these 3 drives. Reinstall each program over itself in the exact same location ... this will keep all your customzations

Option 2 - Delete the program folder and reinstall ... you will lose all customizations.

Option 3 - More like 1.b ... some programs do not use common files or make registry entries. before installing over, you can find the exe file that launches the program in Windows Explorer and dbl click on it ... if it runs properly, then reinstall not necessary, just create a new shortcut to that file.

 

[harrystam]

still there are most likelt disconnected because the registry is messed up. when doing a clean install you can't bring programks over to the drive like video or music files. or in your case leaving the programs on another hard drive. you will have to reinstall all your programs

Why would I have to re-install everything? I already made a few shortcuts and they work just fine.

 

[harrystam]

The common consensus here is reinstall the programs that wont boot properly. Thanks for your input, guys.

Regards,
Harrison