Vista Games Explorer

[TogaForComfort]

Not sure if this should be in the customizing section or not, please move it if it should be.

I know some games do not automatically add to the Games explorer and you can drag shortcuts/exes into the window but has anyone had any luck adding box art to titles manualy added?

I have found the registry entries for each game in the list. It has a URL to the Microsoft box art, however adding a custom path has no effect.

Any ideas?

[:: Lyon ::]

There are about 2 threads mentioned regarding this before. I tried and tried, but still couldn't make it to work as suggested by those posts though..

If someone can shed some light here, it'd be great..

[Badie05]

Yah. I agree, I got crappy looking icons for Half Life 2 Episode 1, STALKER, Halo Custom Edition, and Half Life 2 Deathmatch.

[Lt-DavidW]

I don't see the point in Games Explorer. It's just one more thing to have to click past.

[Malisk]

Well, it can be an alternative for some to the start menu as a collection of your games.

So you can place the Game Explorer on your desktop and quickly get there. Not much to click past. One click for the explorer, another for the game. The first click is usually something else than starting the game anyway, unless you tend to clutter your desktop with lots of game icons and other stuff.

[Argi]

I've never used this piece of junk. Just have games I play often on my desktop or hit Start and type the name in.

[BlakByte]

I've never used this piece of junk. Just have games I play often on my desktop or hit Start and type the name in.

[SomeAzn]

I have the Games folder on my start menu set as a menu so it fans out when I hover over it.

[:: Lyon ::]

It's a good place as a collection of shortcuts of your games.. when your friend comes over and want to play some games, you can tell them the place where to look into

[yert*]

Dunno if this will help but when I changed my view to Large Icons, some of them changed to box art. I don't even have HL2: Ep. 1 though and it's displayed. That's some weird ****...

[marinexx]

I managed to add all of my games to game explorer. you only need some imge edit program like acdsee to do this

this is how i added them:

first you need to download the boxart of the game you want to add (Let's presume it is half life episode one) then use acdsee to resize it to 200 x 295.

click start menu then user account folder at the right topside of start menu and then on this folder click tools/folder options then select view and check the box: show hidden files and folders and click ok.

in the user account window click in order of appdata/local/microsoft/windows/game explorer/gamesboxart

you can see all the game boxes here already added to games explorer. right click one of them (let's presume that you use san andreas for this job) select rename and right click on it again this time select copy you neeed to past this name to boxart pic of episode one and then move it to gameboxart folder click ok confirmation box now you can see episode one box art in game explorer but the name and info still need to edit to do this click start button and type regedit in search box click enter.

in the registry editor click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE_\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\GAMEUX and find the same name of episode one boxart and change the values of path, title, devoloper name, release date, devoloper web address etc.

then open game explorer right click episode one boxart select spcialize click edit you need to replace the target path with episode one's path then click ok

(to bring back san andreas just run game once and it automatically add itself to game explorer once more.)

you can repeat these steps to add new ones

Edited June 11, 2007 by marinexx

[daniel_rh]

I managed to add all of my games to game explorer. you only need some imge edit program like acdsee to do this

this is how i added them:

first you need to download the boxart of the game you want to add (Let's presume it is half life episode one) then use acdsee to resize it to 200 x 295.

click start menu then user account folder at the right topside of start menu and then on this folder click tools/folder options then select view and check the box: show hidden files and folders and click ok.

in the user account window click in order of appdata/local/microsoft/windows/game explorer/gamesboxart

you can see all the game boxes here already added to games explorer. right click one of them (let's presume that you use san andreas for this job) select rename and right click on it again this time select copy you neeed to past this name to boxart pic of episode one and then move it to gameboxart folder click ok confirmation box now you can see episode one box art in game explorer but the name and info still need to edit to do this click start button and type regedit in search box click enter.

in the registry editor click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE_\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\GAMEUX and find the same name of episode one boxart and change the values of path, title, devoloper name, release date, devoloper web address etc.

then open game explorer right click episode one boxart select spcialize click edit you need to replace the target path with episode one's path then click ok

(to bring back san andreas just run game once and it automatically add itself to game explorer once more.)

you can repeat these steps to add new ones

Wow! great collection you have there! Looks nice

[:: Lyon ::]

OH MY goodness!! Your method works!! A bit hard to follow at first, but try here and there, and it works!!! YAY :) Very happy

If people can't make it work, let me know and I'll try to rephrase what marinexx is trying to say :D

[ozgeek]

How did you manage for it to find Half Life 2? I have a full legit cogpy of HL2 and HL2 E1 yet, Games Explorer only finds Half Life Source which I don't have (oh perhaps it's half life source deathmatch which came with HL2 E1.

[:: Lyon ::]

eh well.. it is Half life source in my Games explorer. I've opened up a new topic with hopefully a more understandable/complete guide based on marinexx's post.

https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=566743

[P.M.K]

Does anyone know why none of the games I've install appear in the VGE??

I've installed Stream, NBA Live 08, Tiger Woods 08, BioShock and World of Conflict.

The only games that appear are Solitaire etc.