Windows XP - how to access prgrams on external drive?

I want to be able to access my old windows programs through my new macbook pro but am quite confused by all this stuff today.

I cloned my dell's hard drive to an external usb 2.0 drive and installed windows xp on my macbook pro as the guest os. How can I open my windows programs that are on the external drive.

I did make parallels config to open the usb connector but it told me I was trying to run a high speed usb device with a slow usb connection. Is there a way around this? Obviously my hardware is a high speed usb on the macbook pro, how can I get my guest os to know this?

Any help would be so appreciated. I really was hoping I could have installed Parallels and then just run windows xp from the cloned (and bootable) external usb drive, but couldn't make that work and so I installed windows and will settle for accessing the programs on the external drive if that can be done.

Help....

 

.
Enter the beast that is the registry file. Because Microswift refuse to give up on this savage afront to technological brilliance, you will not be able to run your programs from the external drive. They have registry entries that are looking for files on the C: drive. But they are not there, because now your C: drive is the VM, not the external.

Whom ever at Microsoft is responsible for the registry, should stand and take a bow.
.

 

what about this?

Aarrrgggg. So, could I partition the external drive and install parallels and windows on the same drive with my other windows programs? He said hopefully....