Vista - Re: older programs and Vista

"Ralph" <Ralph@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:BFC4258F-7A46-4EDA-9D5F-82A7A96BD4E6@microsoft.com...
> Hey All. I recently purchased a Gateway with pre-installed Vista Home
> Premium. My last computer suffered damage to the motherboard, so I
> salvaged
> the hard drive and video card and placed them in the new Gateway. They
> seem
> to work fine with no reported conflicts. I intended to reinstall my old
> programs to the primary hard drive one by one, then gather saved data like
> pics and vids from the old hard drive followed by a wipe of the old hard
> drive. However, several programs won't recognize Vista as a operating
> system
> and I can't install them. Some will run from their executables off the
> old
> hard drive.
> Is there any danger to the system by running .exe's off the old hard drive
> since none of those are in the registry? Also, I think of Vista as
> generally a useless memory devouring, piece of crap so can I make the
> computer load and use XP off the old hard drive?
> On another note, I continually recieve COM Surrogate, run32dll, and
> windows
> media player shutdown alerts while trying to capture video from my DV
> camcorder.
>
> Any help is appreciated.

Many programs require more than the executable to run, i.e. as part of the
installation process, they install data libraries (DLLs) which may be in the
folder for the program or may be installed somewhere else, e.g. the Windows
folder or the System32 folder. I suspect that it is not a question of the
programs not recognizing Vista, but of not having the DLLs installed.
Generally, programs that run under XP can be installed and run in XP
Compatability mode and Run as Administrator.