I recently bought a new computer, and have some software on my old one which I would like to put on my new one, but I don't have any cd-roms. Is it possible to go onto the C drive and literally just copy and paste the program files for said programs, onto a usb flash drive and paste them onto my new computer?
Very doubtful - if it were easily done it would be very easy to make hundreds of copies.
When you install the original program it puts 'feet' in the registry. Without the 'feet' it doesn't work, and when you make a copy of the program the 'feet' don't copy.