importing programs, etc. from another WinXP OS on same hard drive

Hi,
I have a problem. My computer shut down for no reason today, then when I
tried to reboot, it told me about a dll file that was needed for windows in
order for windows to start. I tried to repair the windows XP installation,
but it just kept rebooting and wouldn't go any farther. After many attempts
at many different angles of repairing the OS, I finally just installed
another Windows XP Pro in the same partition as the other WindowsXP, only
instead of the "Windows" folder, I named a new folder "Windows2" and
installed it there. Now my computer boots up, but my programs obviously
aren't on my start menu. They're all there in Windows Explorer,
everything's the same. The only difference is that I can't log into the old
Windows OS for some reason, so I have a new OS booting up, with no Start
Menu access to my programs.

My question is this, is there any way to import the programs that are there,
in other words, set up my current windows start menu and desktop to be like
the old one? Please help. Any and all helpful info will be greatly
appreciated.

Best regards,
Stoney

Stoney,

Unfortunately your new installation of Windows lacks all the registry
settings which are needed to make the applications work. Microsoft
recommends *not* to install 2 copies of an OS on one partition, even though
it is physically possible. The applications will become confused as to which
copy of shared .DLLs to use and so forth.

It works well to install 2 copies of XP Pro onto separate partitions. The
applications have to be installed to each one. Then you have redundancy -
when one Windows goes south you abandon it and begin to use the other.

S

Clean install is the way to go. Then try using System Restore by setting
restore points from time to time to avoid having to do this again. :-)