Missing applications after XP clean install/reinstall - Help!!

Howdy. Having a meltdown here. Wouldn't you know it, my laptop goes all BSOD
on me two days before I have a major project due.

Here's my problem in a nutshell: I've reinstalled Windows XP SP2 clean. I've
got my user profile and associated documents back, but no applications.
They're still on the hard drive, I just can't open them.

Initially, everything was gone - user profiles, applications, everything.
I've managed to get my main user profile back so I have all of my documents,
settings, etc. And I have a few applications that must have been installed to
places other than the Program Files folder or wherever. But the vast majority
of my applications are gone. Well, not gone, since I can still see the
Program Files folder on my c drive, and all of the applications and their
data are still there, they just don't show up in the aplications menu, and
their icons have all vanished from my Taskbar, replaced by the generic empty
white icon. When I go into the Program Files folder to try to open any given
application by clicking the .exe file, I get various error messages. Here are
some examples:

"A serious error occurred which prevents NaturallySpeaking from accessing
the registry."
"Cannot start Microsoft outlook. MAPI32.DLL is corrupt or the wrong version.
Please reinstall Outlook."
"Total Recorder is not installed. You must install Total Recorder 7.1 before
running this program."
"TaxCut2007 has failed to start because the application configuration is
incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem."

Most of the discussions I've found online regarding the issue of recovering
corrupt profiles just end the discussion after the profile is recovered and
say "now reinstall your applications."

Now, I have the install disks for a lot of my major applications - Microsoft
Office, etc. But - and I know there's a lesson here, I know - I don't have
the installation disks for a lot of my applications, largely because they
were purchased via download. The install files are, in most cases, long gone.

What I am trying (hoping, praying) to do is get the existing aplications
back. I mean, they're all right there, for crying out loud! I can see em! :)

So, can this be done?

Some additional background on how I got in this jam, and what I've done to
"fix" it so far.

I run Windows on a Mac. It's a dual-boot machine, and my Windows lives on a
40GB partition. I recently started having BSOD issues that prevented Windows
from even booting up - not even in safe mode. The machine wouldn't boot up at
all.

So I set out to do a repair from a legitimately purchased XP-SP2 install CD.
Before I did that, I made a "backup" of the whole hard drive (i.e., the 40GB
partition).

Here's how I did that, which may be relevant. The 40GB partition is an NTFS
file system. Macs have the ability to read, but not write to NTFS partitions.
The whole Windows partition mounts as a hard disk on my Mac desktop. So, I
booted into mac, and just copied the entire contents of that partition onto
an external firewire drive. Specifically, this firewire drive was also
partitioned, and the partition I used was formatted as FAT32 specifically for
use with the windows "machine". (FYI, after I did this I was concerned about
whether or not I would have issues with FAT32 having the 4GB file size
limitation, so I did a search for any files larger than 3.8gb on my mounted
windows partition. There were none, so I feel like I'm safe from any 4GB file
size limitations of FAT32 on my "backup" files.)

Anyway, after I had copied the contents of my Windows partition to another
drive, I first tried a repair install from the Windows Boot CD. No luck,
still BSOD. Not even into safe mode. So... time for a clean install. I had
hoped that my users/documents/prorams would stay intact. No such luck.

I managed to get my main user profile back by creating a new admin profile
within the XP machine, creating a new profile with the same name as the old
one, and then dragging over my old profile data into the corresponding
profile to replace all the "new" data with the old. Now my desktop looks the
same, all (I think) of the files appear to be where I left them, My Documents
contains all of my pictures and docs, etc. So far so good.

But: most of the documents have generic icons as opposed to the icons
indcating their corresponding application. And now, my Start-->All Programs
folder is darn near empty. Only a smattering of apps, as opposed to the huge
list of apps that were on the old machine.

So there's the long drawn-out explanation. If you've read this far, bless you.

So - does anyone have suggestions? Can I get the new Windows install to
"see" my existing apps? Is this a registry issue? (The whole registry concept
is where my brain hits a brick wall.) If so, is it possible to replace my
current registry with the old one that I have saved on the firewire drive?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

-Scott
.

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