"Jim in Spokane" wrote in message
...
I have a new eMachine D620-5133, Model No. MS2257, which is made by Acer.
The operating system is Window Vista Home Basic SP-1 and it has a 32-bit
operating system. I connected the hard drive from my old Dell with
Windows
98 to my new computer. I used an Airlink101 3.5” USB 2.0 SATA/IDE HDD
Enclosure, Model AEN-U35SE to make the connection. I am able to access
the
files on the old hard drive, but the programs don’t work. The whole point
was to be able to use MS Word in the old format, rather than the new
format,
which looks completely different. Other programs don’t work, either.
What
can I do to make them work? Does anybody have any idea how to solve my
problem?


In addition to all the other posts, when a program as sophisticated as
Office is installed onto a computer it puts links into the operating system
control files (in this case the registry) to enable the program to use the
facilities of the operating system better. Since the program wasn't
installed onto your Vista system those links do not exist and Vista doesn't
know about the program. Some of your other programs will have the same
limitation.

Which version of Office are you trying to install? Have you uninstalled any
trial version of Office 2007 prior to attempting to install an older version
of Office? Some people have indicated that they have installed Office '97
onto Vista but I have not successfully installed it yet.