Noob question

Acemath · 5 May 2010 at 10:13

Okay,don't shoot me for asking this maybe noobish question,but because it's the first time ever i'm gonna do this i want it to be flawless

Planning on buying new rig next month,but don't wanna lose my programs and games i have on this pc.What do i need to do?I want to use them on the next computer without going through the hassle of redownloading/reinstalling them

Can i just copy/paste them to my external HD and do it the other way around when the new computer arrives?When i do that can i use the programs right away,or do i still need to reinstall them?

Or do i need to make a back-up?And how do i do that?And how without making a backup of Windows Vista?Moving to Windows 7.

I know this is a stupid question but never done this before so sorry

m4cc45 · 5 May 2010 at 10:15

Steam is easy - just move the folder to your external hard-drive and then copy it back to your PC and run the Steam.exe. The rest of your apps / games will have to be reinstalled if we are talking about moving to a different PC.

M.

Acemath · 5 May 2010 at 10:23

m4cc45 said:
Steam is easy - just move the folder to your external hard-drive and then copy it back to your PC and run the Steam.exe. The rest of your apps / games will have to be reinstalled if we are talking about moving to a different PC.

M.

Thanks,so Steam wouldn't be a problem to copy/paste the map to another HD?But what with other games?Most of them are pretty big and already patched to latest versions.Do i need to make a back-up of these,or can i use Copy/paste also?

Evil-I · 5 May 2010 at 11:08

Hi There,

This link is a useful howto for steam.

Typically other software can be an issue as although you could copy programme folders across, most installations create registry entries which you can't copy that easily.

Also be aware of where you email archive lives, if you're not sure where this is, let me know what email client you use and I can probably tell you where it lives.

To be honest for a stable install I tend to do it all from scratch (not counting steam of course which I copy across). Be careful to check your my docs folder for any game saved data also, as a lot of games keep you player settings and game history there rather than in the game install folder.

I did an upgrade recently and fresh install of windows 7 and it took me about four or five hours to get back to everything installed with all my games, office, email archive and Adobe creative suite. If you are organised and make sure you copy all your required information you'll end up with a more stable and quick install.

E-I

Father Ted · 5 May 2010 at 11:11

Most non Steam games will store files in various different folders on your hard disk outside of the folder the game itself is installed in, as well as writing to the registry so cutting and pasting them is not really an option I'm afraid.

Edit: beaten!

Acemath · 5 May 2010 at 11:14

Thanks all for the info,

So best i to make a image of my current HD?Put it on the external one,and then put it back on the new PC?

SiriusB · 5 May 2010 at 11:22

Evil-I said:
Be careful to check your my docs folder for any game saved data also, as a lot of games keep you player settings and game history there rather than in the game install folder.

This is absolutely the correct behaviour for any Windows software. There is no reason for any software to write to the Program Files folder. User-specific data should always be written to the User's profile.

I would always backup your entire profile folder, because you never know what is in there that you may need.

Father Ted said:
Most non Steam games will store files in various different folders on your hard disk outside of the folder the game itself is installed in

As above, it will save to your User profile unless it is badly written or old [pre-Vista].

as well as writing to the registry so cutting and pasting them is not really an option I'm afraid

If they are single player only games, or the OP never plays online, then there is very good chance there is nothing in the registry that is absolutely required by the game to run. If you wanted to I am sure you could hunt down the registry key with the serial number.

Devrij · 5 May 2010 at 13:07

Acemath said:
Thanks all for the info,

So best i to make a image of my current HD?Put it on the external one,and then put it back on the new PC?

This is your best bet if you want to keep programs aside from games as well. There are benefits to doing fresh install though, so it might be worth copying steam over and just doing a fresh install of windows. If you don't want the hassle, make an image of your HDD using Acronis or another imaging program and then copy that over (again, using the imaging program you used).

Evil-I · 5 May 2010 at 13:24

Acemath said:
So best i to make a image of my current HD?Put it on the external one,and then put it back on the new PC?

I'm not sure tht would help as I'm sure your new rig will have different hardware that requires different drivers, so just imaging your hard drive on your existing rig to your new rig will almost certainly end you up with a buggy install with lots of driver issues. I've tried that sort of things several times and invariably I've ended up spending days trying to solve litlle niggly problems that never really get resolved, when one evening would get the whole thing re-installed from scratch and rock solid and snappy.

In my opinion a clean install is the only way to go. As a backup, maybe copying the entire contents of your current hard drive to your external will at least give you the option of getting to that one file or setting you didn't know you needed?

Anyway, which ever way you go, best of luck.

E-I

Devrij · 5 May 2010 at 13:37

Evil-I said:
I'm not sure tht would help as I'm sure your new rig will have different hardware that requires different drivers, so just imaging your hard drive on your existing rig to your new rig will almost certainly end you up with a buggy install with lots of driver issues. I've tried that sort of things several times and invariably I've ended up spending days trying to solve litlle niggly problems that never really get resolved, when one evening would get the whole thing re-installed from scratch and rock solid and snappy.

In my opinion a clean install is the only way to go. As a backup, maybe copying the entire contents of your current hard drive to your external will at least give you the option of getting to that one file or setting you didn't know you needed?

Anyway, which ever way you go, best of luck.

E-I

Good point ^^^ although a lot of times you'll find windows will search for and install the drivers you need to get going, and then you can go about installing the latest ones from discs/websites/etc. Worked for me anyway. If your external HDD is big enough, perhaps make a backup of everything you might need (music, steam, etc.) and then copy over an image of the HDD as well. If the image copy fails, at least you've got all your data ready to copy over.

Evil-I · 5 May 2010 at 13:38

Also of course, as in your OP you mention you're going from vista to Windows 7, if you imaged you'd still be on vista on your new rig?

Just copy your steam stuff across to your new rig and then re-install everything else, I doubt it will take as long as you think, just plan everything well before, so that you know all your settings etc. I also find a screenshot of your programs list can be helpful remind you of what you had installed on the old box.

MasterPlan1 · 5 May 2010 at 13:56

Some games work completely independant of registry, so they can be copied over from PC to PC, not many, but some.

SiriusB · 5 May 2010 at 14:36

In my experience most of my games work without their associated registry entries, at least in single player. Only real issue you may have, as I said, is serial numbers for online play.

However, if you are building a new machine just install from scratch. You can be up and running in just a few hours with Windows 7 as it takes care of most, if not all, of your drivers on its own. You just need to install the latest graphics drivers and any it has missed.

Steam can be copied over as stated and other games you can just install as and when you intend to play them. You may find you don't even play most of them so will save yourself a lot of hassle than if you decide to try and get everything back onto the new machine all at once.

Devrij · 5 May 2010 at 14:41

Ah you're changing OS? Yeah just go for a clean install. In theory you could copy an image and then upgrade it to W7, but it gets a bit messy at that point and it doesn't always go smoothly. Just copy the entire steam folder from program files (your savegames may be saved elsewhere!) and then when you copy it over just run steam as admin and you'll be sorted for most of your games.