Adding An External Hard Drive ???
 

Hi Its me AGAIN. I am stuck with Vista and a lot of prog's ( games and so forth) which used to work on my prev computer will not now even load. If I( use an EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE to load only these progs or games on to (1) Will this work ?? and (2) will I have to install any Windows 'ie' vista on to the drive ??? Totaly:confused::confused::confused:

No and No.

The external drive is just storage, it needs no operating system. If your current operating system will not run those progs, it matters not where they are installed. Sound like you need a different operating system, either runnable on the same computer or on a separate computer.

If I understand you correctly, you have a new computer with a 'new' O/S. If that's correct then you must re-install all programs/games using the new OS. There is no reason why installing the progs to an external drive should be a problem, and no you wont need an OS on that drive, BUT they will only work on that computer.

Vista is a pain.

I "upgraded" six months ago. I managed to install Photoshop by instructing install under XP.

Unfortunately Illustrator will not, and so the only way is to compartmentalise the PC hard drive and install XP as well.

The portable hard drive makes no difference, as stated by Background Noise.

AS green granite says: if you've installed a new operating system (or reinstalled the existing one) then you also have to reinstall the software - from the original install disks, or from the "installer" you downloaded. The existing old copies on the PC prior to the new operating system won't work.

Well, some old stuff dating prior to 1993 or so may work, but that's not the way to plan.

Internal or external HD makes no difference. I prefer to keep the software on drive C and my "stuff" on the other drives.