can someone run me through transfering my games over to another hdd

[rjk]

havent done this in AGES and really cant remember what i did last time

plus when i did it before i was using XP not vista like i am now

i have started running out of space, my new hard drives came through the mail today

really happy with them but...

i could do with a guide of how to move my games folders [including all of my saves] over to the new drives and then how to get them working again in the same way they were before...

anybody give me a few pointers?

cheers

 

[Wiggins]

Interesting as I am upgrading the wife's pc and she has all the Sims 2 games installed.

Only problem is she has sold them all bar 1 so I need to do something similar if its possible.

 

[rjk]

from what i can remember - you copy the folder to its new location - then install the game off the disk - and point the install location at the new location you copied to

im not sure if it works [no experience of doing it in vista] so would like confirmation

 

[DragonUK20002]

Or get an external HDD and run the games from there? I had WoW installed on my old PC and when I got a new one recently I couldn't bare to reinstall the game and spend days down loading all the patches. Therefore I copied my entire WoW install to a 500GB HDD and it ran from there on my new PC, I decided to copy from the HDD onto my new PC and it works fine without any issues.

 

[cokecan]

Interesting as I am upgrading the wife's pc and she has all the Sims 2 games installed.

Only problem is she has sold them all bar 1 so I need to do something similar if its possible.

Isn't this illegal to do then if she doesn't own the original disks anymore lol

Don't games like all other applications add entries to the registry when installed, so simply copying the game's folder to a new PC or new windows install wont copy these registry entries. I don't know what kinda stuff they may add to the registry but I'd hazard a guess that in a lot of cases, it does it for a reason

 

[Daegan]

i could do with a guide of how to move my games folders [including all of my saves] over to the new drives and then how to get them working again in the same way they were before...

Different games have different file structures, different running requirements, different save folder locations. Some add and require registry entries to run, some don't. There's no one guide for all your games.

Don't games like all other applications add entries to the registry when installed, so simply copying the game's folder to a new PC or new windows install wont copy these registry entries. I don't know what kinda stuff they may add to the registry but I'd hazard a guess that in a lot of cases, it does it for a reason

Typical registry entries will include paths, maybe some configuration options, maybe some registration information. If these aren't present many applications, games included will recreate them when launched. So simply copying the game folder will work some of the time.

 

[rjk]

so its a case of reinstalling -
nevermind

i will backup as much of my saved data as i can then

 

[bledd]

you'd be better off searching how to do it for each game individually, since Dægan is correct

i imagine most games just have one or two paths in the registry, holding a few settings and the cd key, you could easily export these and double click the reg files in the new install (assuming the paths are the same, or edited)

steam for instance can just be copied 'as is' and run from anywhere, it rocks for that (not sure about 3rd party save games, probably in my docs)

 

[AWPC]

99.9% of them just backup the game folder then copy back over to your new HD. Also make sure that your new HD has the same drive letter as the old one. This is because some games modify after install for the drive path. Forget about the registry as most recreate it again anyway. Also backup your save game folders as some games do not recreate these. Found out the hard way asused to reinstall all my recent games after a new HD or rebuild but then did some research and found this way is easier. Steam can backup the games you have installed as well as it contains a util to do this.

 

[bledd]

steam is portable