Management of PC installing games


Recommended Posts

Does anyone know a good system for management of installed PC games? I don't have a large hard disk and nowaday games are so big (eg. CoD4 takes 10GB, Oblivion... Fallout 3, and more). I find myself uninstalling games and then reinstalling them again. And then when Windows XP goes slow I have a habit of reformating and clean install Windows XP. This ofcourse leads to long processes of reinstalling games.

There's a program called InstallRite that is just a file/registry monitor. I usually monitor the registry after an installation of a game and extract/export the relevant registry key lines. I have external backing storage so whenever I ran out of space I move a big game, etc. Fallout 3 to the backing storage. If something happened to Windows XP and I had to reformat & reinstall then I can just import the registry file of that game, and copy the game folder back into C:\Program Files\, etc. This seems to work for most games.

Am curious if there's other better easier ways... How do you do yours?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Does anyone know a good system for management of installed PC games? I don't have a large hard disk and nowaday games are so big (eg. CoD4 takes 10GB, Oblivion... Fallout 3, and more). I find myself uninstalling games and then reinstalling them again. And then when Windows XP goes slow I have a habit of reformating and clean install Windows XP. This ofcourse leads to long processes of reinstalling games.

There's a program called InstallRite that is just a file/registry monitor. I usually monitor the registry after an installation of a game and extract/export the relevant registry key lines. I have external backing storage so whenever I ran out of space I move a big game, etc. Fallout 3 to the backing storage. If something happened to Windows XP and I had to reformat & reinstall then I can just import the registry file of that game, and copy the game folder back into C:\Program Files\, etc. This seems to work for most games.

Am curious if there's other better easier ways... How do you do yours?

post-8993-1260467497_thumb.jpg

And backup the registry, where's the drama?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@ OP

Why don't you upgrade to Windows 7? Why do you reinstall XP every time? I remember reinstalling XP twice over four years and it was still running quite quickly because I disable all unnecessary startup programs, uninstall anything I don't use, regularly scan my computer for malware and browse the Interwebs safely.

You either have to drop the habit of reinstalling XP so often or you need to buy a new hard drive (you can get a 500 GB internal for around $60) while installing the games in a separate directory (C:\Games\ {Insert game here}) so you just copy and paste the setting quickly. It should be a couple of gigabytes worth of data (if you only copy the save files for each game).

When I want to install a game that I played a long time ago with some of save files I kept from back then, I just simply install the game on my hard drive and replace the save files with the ones I had from before and that's it. Yes, you do have reinstall the games again if you reformatted your PC.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@ OP

Why don't you upgrade to Windows 7? Why do you reinstall XP every time? I remember reinstalling XP twice over four years and it was still running quite quickly because I disable all unnecessary startup programs, uninstall anything I don't use, regularly scan my computer for malware and browse the Interwebs safely.

You either have to drop the habit of reinstalling XP so often or you need to buy a new hard drive (you can get a 500 GB internal for around $60) while installing the games in a separate directory (C:\Games\ {Insert game here}) so you just copy and paste the setting quickly. It should be a couple of gigabytes worth of data (if you only copy the save files for each game).

When I want to install a game that I played a long time ago with some of save files I kept from back then, I just simply install the game on my hard drive and replace the save files with the ones I had from before and that's it. Yes, you do have reinstall the games again if you reformatted your PC.

Thats why I love steam, I do have to reinstall my non steam games, but most of my games are on steam and all of my games on a separate drive, so when I reformat I simply go to my game drive and open the steam exe, it automatically installs the steam service and I can play all my steam games :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

like others have said buy a larger hd & store your games on it

you can get a 1.5tb hd 32mb cache 7200 rpm for $79

myself i dont really have that many steam games but i do like the backup feature

as far as retail cds i make images of my discs using alcohol 120

store them on a larger hd & never touch the cd/dvd again

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The only time I uninstall a game is if I haven't played it in a long time or if I need extra disk space. Usually, I find myself uninstalling games that I haven't played in months. If I want to play it again, I simply reinstall it. I've never had the need or desire to backup my registry for the sake of games.

Moved Here

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, you do have reinstall the games again if you reformatted your PC.

Older games usually needed importing some registry key, but after getting new harddisks I've only installed few games. All the others I have transferred with delicious copy&pasta method. That works.

Steam & other digital downloads (except torrents :shifty: ) suck.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.