For backing up your windows system, I highly recommend XXClone. Unlike disk imagers, that may need to have the image restored, it will create a bootable copy of your system on another drive – just plug in the cloned drive or select it as the first boot device in the BIOS and you’re back in business. www.xxclone.com/

As MarkHirst says, almost everything these days ends up with something on the system drive and it is indeed a crapshoot as to whether it will make any difference if you move the drive to another computer, or reinstall windows. One solution would be using something like Microsoft VirtualPC, Virtual Box or VMWare to create a virtual machine and install your software in that. Then your entire windows environment and applications reside in a single file that you can move to any system that and run it. The disadvantage – particularly in the case of 3D is that the performance will suffer – you’re emulating an entire PC in software. Also, AFAIK, only one of these solutions (not sure which) supports 3D hardware acceleration, and even that is probably slower than the real thing.

The other alternative is application virtualization. VMWare sells an application called ThinApp that will package an application and effectively make it portable – it will include its own registry, user directories etc. Basically, you install the application and ThinApp monitors the install to determine what files, settings etc. to use to create the package. Then, as long as your target machine meets the basic requirements the packaged app will run. The bad news, ThinApp is $8,000+ The (possibly) good news is that I just found a free alternative called Cameyo. www.cameyo.com/index.aspx 

Haven’t downloaded or tried it, but it may be a solution. There is a 60 day trial of ThinApp but I don’t know what if any limitations it has.

In your case with Poser, I don’t think you’ll need it, I trust BB’s experience, but it may be something to keep in mind for your other applications.
 

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