Extracting registry entries for games when formatting windows

Schnippzle · 2 Mar 2009 at 18:22

Howdy,
I'v been thinking about this a lot recently, and more and more as I need to reformat my windows array pretty soon. Is there a piece of software that will go through my registry and extract all entries per game so that I can re-import them when I had formatted my windows drive?

I'm sure a lot of people keep their games installed on one hard drive and their windows on another, and have found that after a fresh install of windows some of their games do not work any more.

Schnippzle · 3 Mar 2009 at 21:55

HangTime said:
Definitely untrue if we're talking about modern retail boxed copy games. I'd say that the majority of games released in recent years have registry entries, and some of those won't even run if the registry entries aren't present. For Steam games, it might be different.

Just take a look in HKLM/Software/Wow6432Node (last bit might not be there for 32bit OS) and you'll likely find a whole host of publisher/developer entries - I've got Bioware, Crytek, EA, Eidos, Monolith, Rockstar, Techland etc all in there amongst others, and I don't even have THAT many games installed

Indeed. Just look at trying to patch a game after having reformatted windows. Not all games will automatically pick up the location of the game, and will not provide an option to manually locate it.

Schnippzle · 4 Mar 2009 at 12:07

I wonder if you could realistically re-write windows to not rely on one file as the registry, but instead have a folder containing all these .ini files which would be called upon when needed? I guess one could treat them like windows services relying on files to run. But then again you would still need a "registry" of services and file locations...

Back on topic: Does any one know of a program that will perform the previously mentioned function?

Schnippzle · 4 Mar 2009 at 12:50

Dj_Jestar said:
No, you can't.

Any university students fancy writing a program for their dissertation? Pretty sure its a product that can be sold all over the world

Schnippzle · 4 Mar 2009 at 14:51

Dj_Jestar said:
Not possible. Is boils down to Microsoft don't want you to do it, so to remove or replace anything with registry functionality will need to be done at OS level, and will inherently break other functionality and render your OS useless.

Not sure if Im do not understand you completely, but surely in the case of game patches it would be possible to find the location of a game from within the registry if the game name is searched for (might be able to check this at home). If that can be found, then surely the registry strings in question can be exported for later use in case of a format?

I know I do not completely understand the functions of the registry nor how those functions work. I'm just spitting ideas, so please pardon any wildly incorrect assumptions.

Schnippzle · 4 Mar 2009 at 16:10

Dj_Jestar said:
That would work, yes.. but then you could just export your entire registry and import it again after a format.

Surely that would also import all the malware, viruses and unwanted crap that the format would have gotten rid of in the first place?