The reason the programs won't run is that they are now not really installed to run with your new computer. All the programs that were installed when your IDE drive was master are still there, they just don't know what to do.

When you insatll something, it installs things that Windows puts in certain places, and it associates itself with the rest of your computer. It finds and uses the hardware that it needs, either automatically, or by user intervention. When you relegated the old OS/Program drive to a slave drive, it lost all those associations. Programs like ProTools don't simply run because they are on one of the drives. They have to installed. There's no easy way to make it work, short of reinstall. There are too many things that you'd have to find and stick into even the most unlikely nooks and crannys of Windows to try to make ProTools work from that slave drive. Remember that it's NOT using the same Windows as it was...it's using the Windows on the new drive. The .dll files alone could keep you busy for months. "ERROR: Missing syscrash.dll. ProTools will not perform properly without this file". Even if you mangaed to find that, and copy it to the proper location on your new hard drive...it's going to keep popping up with stuff like that.

Even if you moved that old IDE drive to master with all that stuff, you'll likely have problems because you've just plopped it down in a brand new neighborhood that it's unfamiliar with. It's going to be running all over the new neighborhood looking for familiar things. "WHY isn't there a McDonald's here? I see a Burger King...guess I'll have to go in there."
(Why isn't that Matrox video card here, I see an ATI...guess I'll have to use that).

It MAY be POSSIBLE that you could spend enough time with tweaking and having programs and Windows rearranging things for the new hardware if you switched that to the OS master, but not likely it will be done so everything works flawlessly. It's not really advisable to do that, because you'll have all kinds of leftover associations, drivers, and other files cluttering things, and causing possible problems.

What would happen is that once you turn that computer on with the IDE as master, IF Windows boots up at all, it will start trying to reinstall everything that it finds that is different from your old computer. And, even if you did get it to finally find everything and boot up, then you may have to go into a lot of programs and reassign things there.

Sorry to say....there's probably no easy way to make it work short of reinstalling. I don't know if the ProTools people would send you new discs, or allow you to download the program again. If you're not the one who registered it, (if it was registered properly), I'm pretty sure I KNOW they won't.

If you do have it registered, or your buddy can provide proof, can't hurt for one of you to contact the ProTools people to see if something is possible. I wouldn't hold my breath, but you never know.

Good luck, and please accept my thanks for your service in the military, and know we all appreciate all of you. 8-)

Kapt.Krunch

Do you still have the old computer? If so, I might be inclined to pickup an extra hard disk and, using Norton Ghost (or something similar), ghost your old computer to the new HD and install that as the boot disk in your new machine. If you have any special IDE drivers installed on your old computer, you should change it to the generic MS IDE driver before ghosting.

If you do this, there is a decent chance that the new computer will boot from the ghosted drive. It WILL go through and install drivers for all the new system devices, but if it makes it through that successfully you will likely be in business.

The other thing with doing it this way is that it won't hose up the system disk on your old computer - you keep that intact as your backup system until you get the new box running.

What Zemlin says may work, and may be worth a try. (I was going on the assumption of not buying anything else).

Plus, if you find it does work, eventually you could relegate one of the other drives for the audio work drive, and the other for backup, or something.

While this may get you out of your pinch, it's still always better to start off fresh, if possible. There's probably a lot of unnecessary garbage on your old drive that should be nuked, anyway. And who knows if it isn't going to object to something. Worth a try.

I usually back-up and then format my OS drive about once a year, anyway, and clone it back to the way it was after I set everything up at first. Nothing like a good tune-up to keep things running smoothly.

Just some thoughts.

Good idea Zemlin.

Kapt.Krunch

I had to do this once I found the information at this site helpful. You will need to do lots of prep work before hand gathering driver disks and such. If your lucky windows installed the cabs on the computer so everything will be right there if not your gonna need your windows cd.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html

for additional info you can google "moving xp from one computer to another"