Do games have to be installed on same drive as Windows???

jmp_78 · 19 Jun 2010 at 21:48

Okay, so this might sound like a really dumb question... but humour me.

I have always assumed that when you install a game onto say a 2nd physical hard drive "D:", and Windows is on a different drive "C:", then during the game install all files will goto the 2nd drive, but a few critical files will be put into the Windows directory on "C:".

Therefore, if one day I formatted my "C:" drive and re-installed Windows, all games on "D:" would no longer work as the critical files had now been wiped.

True or false? Am I being a dummy here?

I'd like to buy a HUGE capacity drive with all of my games installed, but I tend to format my main physical drive every 12 months to keep it fresh - is my comments above are true, then I won't be able to do this.

Thanks very much for any comments - within reason

infernox · 19 Jun 2010 at 21:51

you can install games on a different drive to your os its what i do

eammoncass · 19 Jun 2010 at 22:24

no they don't have to be installed, also you can even partition the drive so that its split into 2 or move even.

olivier renault · 19 Jun 2010 at 22:25

jmp_78 said:
Okay, so this might sound like a really dumb question... but humour me.

I have always assumed that when you install a game onto say a 2nd physical hard drive "D:", and Windows is on a different drive "C:", then during the game install all files will goto the 2nd drive, but a few critical files will be put into the Windows directory on "C:".

Therefore, if one day I formatted my "C:" drive and re-installed Windows, all games on "D:" would no longer work as the critical files had now been wiped.

True or false? Am I being a dummy here?

I'd like to buy a HUGE capacity drive with all of my games installed, but I tend to format my main physical drive every 12 months to keep it fresh - is my comments above are true, then I won't be able to do this.

Thanks very much for any comments - within reason

Yes, games usually use the registry, or the user folder to store stuff like CD keys, game settings, save games. So wiping out your system partition will most likely break the games.

However, with Steam, you can re-install Steam on top of your old folder, and it 'should' detect the files being already there instead of downloading everything again. Or you can just back it up before re-installing windows.

With Win 7, you can also move your user folder away from the primary partition as well (all the My Documents, internet cache, ITunes, ect... basically all your crap that doesn't belong on the system drive

).

But usually, re-installing Windows means re-installing all the applications and games again. For me, a huge flaw in the system tbh. Windows doesn't really keep things clean. But I do agree that installing all programs, videos, music and games on another drive has to be done regardless.

Boozebeard · 19 Jun 2010 at 22:37

Most games will work fine if you wipe the windows directory. The most common thing that will stop them working would be that you will no longer have something like direct x installed or physx. So you would just have to install the latest version of them. We play loads of games at college and all we do is copy the game folder onto our external hard drives and play them directly off there.

JamesTuc · 19 Jun 2010 at 23:17

I've never had any problems copy/pasting games folders between pc's or removable hdd's

Cycrow · 20 Jun 2010 at 00:22

very rarly do games actually install files into other places, and usually what they install are simply some librarys, directx, c++ dist, etc
which you can install seperatly anyways.

a few games do have problems if you have missing registry entries from a reinstall, but most generally work.

the main problems i find is that when use game editors, patches, etc. They wont detect the game as the registry entries are missing, but most can be manually inputted anyways

Yurihyuga · 20 Jun 2010 at 00:43

Go into your registry and go to

HKEY_Local_Machine -> Software -> Microsoft -> Current Version

You will see registry entrys on the right

Here what I did is just change all the C:/Program Files C:/Program Files(x86) program files\common files blah blah entrys and just changed the drive letter to the drive I wanted them to install on.

Now what you will find is when you install programs most will by default install on the new drive and it will make new program file folders on it however some will still need to change the drive letter during the install where it asks what folder you want to install in.