Reinstalling Applications from HD

[ed29292]

I recently had to move everything on my Harddrive to my external harddrive in order to replace my in-laptop HD due to some strange glitch. I did this through the Apple store, and they were very useful, but I've just got my laptop back and am having some problems moving everything back from my external HD to my laptop. Files are fine, everything loads up as it should, but Applications seem to be failing, I was particularly keen to have the Adobe suite and Windows Office running at full capacity, as I don't particularly want to buy them again!
I moved the Application avatars into my application folder on my laptop, but what else is it I need to do? Copy the Library across?
My external has all my old files on it, everything, so in theory couldn't I wipe my laptop and copy everything across? I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do next.
Thanks for any help you can offer

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Does the external HDD show up in System Preferences > Startup Disk?
If so, click that HDD and then the RESTART button and boot from it, to see, ifg it works.

If that works, and while booted from the external HDD, use CarbonCopyCloner to make a 1:1 copy from the external HDD to the internal HDD*, unless that external HDD also includes other data besides the data Apple copied over, if they even cloned the HDD.

And just because your applications don't work now, doesn't mean, that you have to buy them again in order to reinstall them, as you obviously bought the software already, thus you should have some install media.

And to learn more about Mac OS X:

Helpful Information for Any Mac User by GGJstudios​

Needs to be formatted again:

How to format a new HDD/SSD to install Mac OS X or make a bootable copy onto​

 

[ed29292]

Thank you for the prompt reply, sorry it's taken me so long to try it. Unfortunately, it hasn't shown up on the Startup Disk, so not 100% sure what choices I'm left with now.
Am tempted to take it in to the local Apple shop and ask them to help!
I've moved everything I need onto the External, could I just format my Mac, and then boot it in Harddrive mode and use a friends laptop as proxy to copy everything onto it?
Or would that just brick my laptop?

 

[ed29292]

Oh, and whilst I can technically re-download the Adobe suite, I'm going back to uni tomorrow, who have for some unknown reason prevented access to the Akamai download manager you need to download the files. Which is a serious pain.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

How did you copy your internal HDD to the external HDD?
Use CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to make a 1:1 copy, that is bootable.

 

[ed29292]

Drag and drop :/
And now of course, it's been wiped!

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Drag and drop :/
And now of course, it's been wiped!

Yeah, drag and drop does not work.
You now have to start fresh, reinstalling the applications and such.
It shouldn't take that long, maybe an hour or two.

 

[ed29292]

Ah, what a pain. I'll know for next time though I guess!
Thanks for the help though!

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Ah, what a pain. I'll know for next time though I guess!
Thanks for the help though!

Just keep the installers. I do, especially from CDs and DVDs, as I am kind of messy with such small stuff. That way, I can reinstall all the applications I need quite fast from an external HDD.