"Upgrading" OS- can't loose a program

[Bossnass]

So my girlfriend has a P3-1200 with 192 megs of ram, bought in summer 2000. We've been living together for a little over a year now and she finally come to understand that I have always been tweaking it and always will, and recently agreed that we should upgrade to XP home. I'm running xphome on the laptop and my primary motivation is easier networking, I'm sick of 98 and xp fighting with each other.

The xp discs I have are 'for a new system' and require a clean install. The problem is an address-book contact list type program. It's been installed and used for over three years and I've been directed that loosing it is not an option. Simple enough, but although she can produce the jewelcase, she can't produce the original install disc.

If it was an 98-98 or a xp-xp transfer, I'd just back up the installed directory and mess with the reg, but I don't know how to go about this process. Any advice is apprecieated.

[glytch]

Does the address-book contact list program have an option to export to a file? If so, you could just save the export file somewhere on a disk or your computer over the network, etc. Then all you have to do is install XP, reinstall the program, and import the file and you're all set.

[Bossnass]

Yeah, I don't have to original disc, so I can't reinstall.

[Holo]

what is the program's name? If she purchased the program originally you can legally download another copy and use your purchased serial to activate it.

[glytch]

Oops, I apologize for missing the statement about not having the original disc, must've slipped my mind. If Holo's suggestion doesn't work, you might still want to look into what kind of file exporting the list to will create. Sometimes you can import to a different program such as Outlook and the like. At the very least, if it's some sort of text file, you could manually do it.