Posted on 02/25/2026 5:07:51 AM PST by LouAvul
..without disks?
It's a unique program that I bought ~30 years ago. PC Study Bible.
I bought the original version and have paid for the upgrades plus optional add ons.
The owner/operator passed and PC Study Bible ceased to exist. Now I want the ability to transfer the program in its entirety from one PC to another.
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Get a USB flash drive, they are about 5 bucks and can hold around 4G of data. I use one all the time. The only thing though you need the installer of the program otherwise it won’t run. It has to install the program on the new computer so it can put it in the registry.
Some computers have migration software, Dells & Apples furnish a transfer method. I’ve only used it between like computers, old apple to new apple. Dell to new dell. Otherwise I found this possibility
“To migrate programs to a new computer, use dedicated transfer software like Laplink PCmover, Zinstall, or EaseUS Todo PCTrans to move applications, settings, and files automatically.”
It is going to depend on the specifics of the program.
There are programs that are entirely contained in one folder, sometimes with some subfolders. Those are easy to move, just copy the folder (and subfolders) to a jump drive, and then copy it to the same place on your new computer.
Some programs make changes to your registry during installation, or install DLL’s or other weirdness to your system folder. If this is one of these, you are pretty much out of luck.
Some programs do have set up executables that are in the same folder as the program that take care of the steps in the previous paragraph. Look for a file called setup.exe or install.exe, or even setup.bat or install.bat.
Good luck.
I used to use PC Study Bible decades ago. I’ve switched to using biblestudytools.com for most of my cross references (i.e. Strong’s Concordance).
LouAvul, don’t lose that program
You need to compress it to a .zip
Send it off in an email to yourself
I would suspect that someone within your church
group could show you and do it for you.
It’s likely not going to happen unless you have the installer. It probably makes entries in the Registry in order to run.
I had to do that once. An ordeal, it was. Old software, no disk. Just put it on usb and walk it across the room to the new laptop, eh? No...
When originally installed in the old laptop, it planted something to deep for a non-techie like me to locate and thwart. Didn’t matter that I had a key/code. It simply would not work in another computer.
It was lifetime paid-for software, no longer for sale anywhere on the planet. The company was defunct and although I found the original designer, he wasn’t interested in keeping his promise to provide customer support.
I had to turn to a geek. Don’t ask me what he did, it is wizardry, beyond mortal comprehension. Took him only a few minutes.
Save yourself time and anxiety. Find a geek.
You might search Internet Archive.
It’s got a lot of old programs that are now public domain.
Yes. DLL's or other weirdness, exactly. Don't try to take out your own appendix. Find someone who already knows weirdness!
I think I did something like that with a flight sim app— Windows ME-to-Win2000 Pro...Can’t you just locate your app’s .exe file in its current Programs folder, copy that folder and its contents to a portable drive and then transfer copies of those files to the HD of your new system? Are permissions stuck on read-only? You might be able to install and run it from a portable HD plugged into your new system(?), but if you could do that, you could probably just copy the Programs folder and its content and paste it straight into your new Programs folder (C:/) and install/run (as Administrator) from there. I don’t have much of a handle on non-Windows machines and I could be way off on whether it can be done between Windows computers, so don’t take this as being advice or even educated guessing.
Buttons12 wrote: “I had to turn to a geek. Don’t ask me what he did, it is wizardry, beyond mortal comprehension. Took him only a few minutes. Save yourself time and anxiety. Find a geek.”
If you can’t find a geek, look for a 10 year old kid.
If you do get stuck, because it is a difficult thing to move programs as others have said, the config files locate stuff on the old computer that may not even exist on the new computer. If you get stuck, i recommend Logos. It’s great but costly and there are different levels. The legacy software might be cheaper as they seem to have moved to web or app configurations.
If you cant transfer it, you could always download it again. Most recent version is 2014. I don’t know what costs this might entail. Just an idea.
https://pc-study-bible.updatestar.com/en
There are so many ways that this can go wrong that it’s impossible to make a prediction as to whether it will work or not.
Even if the original installation media can be found, there’s no guarantee that it can be installed on another machine and activated. Obsolete, abandoned software often means that activation servers are no longer online.
One thing that often works, especially if moving from an older less-capable machine to a modern, faster one, is to create a virtual machine from the older one, allowing you to run any of the software on that machine on the new modern computer.
Most software from 30 years ago merely expanded a ZIP into the target folder. Installers were simply self-extracting ZIPs. Any required DLLs were in that directory tree without any fancy stuff. Just copy the tree onto a thumb drive and then onto the target computer. The only tricky stuff they did back then might have been a license file hidden away. Its too bad people started using the Registry. Its an abomination. To this day I still read and write my own .ini files and avoid the registry.
For a few more bucks they can hold 256G.
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