The mother board on my gateway is fried, the geek squad recommened an external hard drive, I did that now cannot access programs. I want to be able to use Frontpage which I do not have on my current computer. Is there a way to gain access to programs?

I'm sorry to say "Probably not".
Generally, programs have to be "installed". What this means is that in addition to the executable file (e.g. frontpage.exe) being placed in a folder, there are numerous other (invisible) changes done to your system during installation (for example, registry entries).

If you have the original install CDs for your programs, you should be able to "re-install" them on your new system. You can recover your data files from the external drive by locating them and simply copying them to the data folder that the newly installed program is looking in.

If you don't have installation CDs for your programs, you are probably out of luck.

Sorry,
Wally H.