This.
But I am curious as to why it needs to install every time?
Disclaimer: I sure there is a valid reason why.
Because steam itself doesn't check to see if they are installed, its game dependant. To copy and paste from a previous post of mine:
Basically, the game will go through the 'first time install' procedure, installing VCredists and DirectX numerious times. Its possible to avoid these with some simple regediting:
If you go into the steam folder for the game, there will be a file in there, either installscript.vdf or <numbers>install.vdf where the numbers are the game's steam app number. Opening these files in notepad show that when you run the game, for example here's Dogfighters file:
Code:
"InstallScript"
{
"Registry"
{
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\DarkWaterStudios\\DogFighter"
{
"string"
{
"Install_Path" "%INSTALLDIR%"
"Exe_Path" "%INSTALLDIR%\\dogfightersteam.exe"
}
"dword"
{
"PatchVersion" "3"
}
}
}
"Run Process"
{
"VCRedist"
{
"HasRunKey" "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\DarkWaterStudios\\DogFighter\\Installed\\VCRedist"
"process 1" "%INSTALLDIR%\\redist\\vcredist_x86.exe"
"command 1" "/Q"
"NoCleanUp" "1"
}
"DirectX"
{
"HasRunKey" "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\DarkWaterStudios\\DogFighter\\Installed\\DX"
"process 1" "%INSTALLDIR%\\redist\\DirectX\\DXSETUP.exe"
"command 1" "/silent"
"NoCleanUp" "1"
}
}
}
Essentually it will install the VCredist, and then create a registry key to say that its done this, and then installs DirectX and creates another reg key. Then whenever you start the game in the future, it sees the registry keys already exist so doesn't install them in the future. Obviously when you copy over these keys don't exist, so it goes through the whole process again. Its possible, but time consuming, to manually edit all these into the registry, but then its faster to simply run them all.
However, if you format fairly regularly, you could spend the time going through each game, getting the reg keys and compiling them into one large .reg file to run after the OS install, so steam won't check for any of these at all.
