transferring to other Mac, having trouble

Hello-- here's a question from a new forum member.

We have two 2006 iMacs running OS x.6.8-- mine and our son's.

My computer is shot, so after purchasing a new Macbook Pro for our son to use in college, I am now transferring data from my old hard drive to my son's old computer which I intend to use until I can afford a new one.

Luckily I am able to access my hard drive by selecting it as a target drive through the working computer. I have used a firewire cable to transfer all the data. I believe I have things in their proper places (libraries, documents, Homes, apps etc). Email successfully imported.

So far so good.... except when I open any of my applications, they act as if I never opened or registered them before. Even when I open a document that belongs to that app. This includes iPhoto not being able to find my photos, which is odd because I know I have the photo library there in the correct place.

I repaired permissions, but that had no effect. I did reinstall the software registration code on one app and then it was able to open its documents.

One concern I have pertains to the name of the computer. I changed it from my son's name to my name but often his name still shows up as the "owner". Do I have to get into the Root account to change that? Does it matter?

Basically I am just wondering why I am so close but still so far from being able to migrate my account to this computer. I don't think I can use migration assistant because remember I am using target drive on an otherwise inaccessable hard drive.

Sorry if this is too many questions for one post! What blindingly obvious thing am I missing?
Thanks
Andrea

You should try Migration Assistant for the apps. There are hidden files as well as preferences to be moved.
I haven't tried this from one User to another - try it.

Agreed, Migration Assistant makes this as simple as a couple clicks, and a wait.

moot point, thanks anyway

Thanks for the replies re: migration assistant. I don't think I could use it because my old computer was only accessible via selecting as target drive. Maybe I was wrong about that. In any case I finally decided to buy a new computer that will work with my new ipad etc. The old one was too limited and "antique" by today's standards.

The Apple store tech people are doing the migration for me, getting at the hard drive one way or another, and I have a back up so I think it will all work out.

Thanks again for the responses! You can consider the problem resolved.
Andrea