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Q: I have an Operating system of XP which came with games (Solitaire).  I just bought a new Dell with Vista.  My wife doesn’t like the solitaire that came with Vista.  I sent the solitaire on my old computer to a thumb drive then tried to open it on my new computer and got the following message: “Windows cannot find C:\Windows\system32\sol.exe.  Make sure you typed the name correctly then try again.”   Is there a way to get the Solitaire from my old to my new computer?

P.S. As a BWB resident, we enjoyed your Christmas display. 

– Keith S.
Bluewater Bay, FL

A: Thanks for the compliment on the lights, Keith.  I enjoyed creating them for you, and all the other hundreds of people who stopped by during the season.  If all goes well, I’ll have an Independence Day display that you’ll also enjoy.  Now, on to your question.  It sounds like you went to your Start menu, located the entry for Solitaire, then right-clicked on it and chose “Send To” (your thumb drive).  Unfortunately, all you accomplished by doing that was to send the shortcut that launches Solitaire to your thumb drive.  That shortcut points to the file path you cited in your question, which doesn’t exist on yourVista computer.  I wasn’t 100% certain that XP’s Solitaire would even work onVista, so I performed a little test on my own machine, and it worked just fine.  To get the game moved, you actually need to copy two files.  The first is the “sol.exe” that you mentioned, and the other is a file named “Cards.dll” that is located in the same directory.  On your XP machine, hit WinKey+E to open a file browser window.  Navigate to C:\Windows\System32.  You may get a warning that these are protected files.  Proceed with caution.  Locate both files, right click and select “Copy”, then navigate to your thumb drive, and select “Paste”.  You can perform these file operations one at a time, or on both files simultaneously.  Once both files are copied, safely remove your thumb drive from the XP machine, and plug it into theVista machine.  You should be able to run it right off the thumb drive, but for long-term use, you’ll want to install it somewhere convenient.  I suggest creating a directory off the root of theVista machine’s hard drive — something like C:\SolitareXP.  Move both files from the thumb drive to the new directory.  To create an icon to run the game, right click on sol.exe and select “Create Shortcut”.  It should create a new file named “Shortcut to Sol.exe”.  Right click the new file and select “Rename”.  Name it “SolitaireXP”.  Notice the little arrow in the lower left corner of the icon?  That’s what lets you know this is a shortcut.  Now drag that file wherever you want to have a convenient way to launch SolitaireXP, such as your desktop.  You can even drag it over to the main Windows Start button, hold there for a moment without releasing the button, and the menu will pop up.  Then you can drop the file anywhere you like on the menu.

TIP OF THE WEEK: When you select Cut, Copy, or Paste from a menu, you’re using a virtual tool in Windows called the “clipboard”.  The clipboard can hold a copy of just about any data your computer can process, including text, pictures, music, and even entire files or directories.  Its purpose is to allow you to easily move or duplicate these data within or between programs.