Miscellaneous

If it were just that there was an imminent hardware failure on a box (I assume from your email address that this is an instrument controller), I might just try and get another box identical in HW configuration to what you have, and use ghost or something similar to pull an image of the box, and push that image down to the working HW.

BUT... given that your app wants windows 2000, I am betting that your OS, your HW, and your program are older than dirt, and precede not only you but probably most of your staff :-)

Copying everything in the program files folder will likely fail. There are likely registry entries, and maybe components in other folders (shared components or system folders). No way to know without the original documentation/disks/programmer.

Try laplink pcmover, that may be the easiest thing, since you do not have anyone there who knows the history of the program, and there is going to be a snowballs chance in he!! of you getting identical hardware to make a clone.

Good luck!

now the app begins to open, it even gives me a login screen (which will fail with incorrect password) but with a *correct* password, the program dies.
Interesting problem. Look in Event Viewer to see if there are any clues about why the app dies. Maybe there is a dependency application that you've not considered? Like JInitiator or Oracle Client or SQL?

You can also run Process Monitor (procmon) and look to see what is happening when the program dies and that could give you some clues too.

So you have an install that is designed for an 11-year old operating system, no install media, instructions, documentation, or contact with the original designer? Put that way and if the answer to the above is "no", the course of action is pretty clear. You're going to need to update the thing at some time to run on a *supported* OS and account for newer hardware as well as 64-bit compatibility; take advantage of this and do it all at once.