I started a thread earlier about the issues I was having with my sound card. The short of it is no matter what I did I couldn't get the sound to work right for longer than a day so I just did a Vista reset. Before doing this I transferred a bunch of programs over to an external HDD. I did both a full backup and manually transferred some files. Some of them games some of them utilities that I've paid for and downloaded.

Now my question is how do I get these programs back up and running? I ran the auto restore, but I have to transfer the actual programs manually. When I do this though (ex. just picking up and dropping an entire game's file from my external HDD to the programs folder in my C: drive) it will transfer but I can't execute the program. What should I be doing differently?

Most programs install to both the program files and to the system32 folder, which allows Windows to recognize that they're installed. You should reinstall the appropriate programs so you can still run them or, if you still have your previous WINDOWS/system32 folder, then you may be able to restore functionality by simply putting the contents of your old system32 folder in your new one and choosing no whenever it asks you if you want to replace a file.

When you say reinstall you mean just drag and dropping it back into the program file in my C: drive? Because when I do this it doesn't work. I'm not asked anything. It just transfers the whole file but I can't execute the program. I'm sure that has to do something WINDOWS/system32 folder you were talking about, but honestly I don't know if I have the old one now.

I did the backup and auto restore program that came on the external hdd, but I didn't manually copy the old WINDOWS/system32 folder. Did I screw up and now have to reinstall everything disc by disc again?

Since the system32 folder tells Windows what programs you have installed, not having the program-specific files for it may mean that yes, you have to reinstall your programs disc by disc.

It's possible that there's another way to get your programs working without reinstalling them from the discs, but I don't know what it is.