Hi there, I recently had to re-load my operating system (XP).  Obviously I overwrote the registry and now XP knows nothing of the software on my PC.  Is there any way for XP to learn of what is on my PC or am I doomed to re-loading all of it?  Thank you in advance.  Jv :'(

I assume you are working with one drive/partition and have installed Xp on top of an existing Xp ?   If so then I think somethings will still work but most will need to be re-installed.

You might want to look at some imaging software (Acronis, Ghost)  to avoid having to do this in future. Basically the idea is that you Install your operating system and programs and then make an image which can be restored should anything go wrong - saves hours.

   Actually, if you reinstall Windows to the same location it was before (assuming that you did not reformat the drive), it will remember everything and you will not have to reinstall anything.
   Harrysmith's suggestion concerning imaging software really does not work in your situation because you would have just ended up putting everything back the way it was before including putting the old Windows back on (that is if you restore the entire image).  That sort of defeats the purpose of reinstalling Windows.  If you only restore part of the image (assuming that to be all of your programs but not the old Windows), you will still have to reinstall everything (which is really the same place you are at now).
   If you can find a backup of the registry from the old Windows, restoring that should work.  If the old Windows and new Windows are different versions, it will not work.
   Other than that, the only option is to reinstall all of your programs.

Sorry not to be clear. I meant that it was a good idea to use imaging once a good system had been created.

I know it takes time but I think it is better ( in the long run) to start again and install a clean system and then take an image.