Due to me being a cheap @rse, I've recently put together a new build but reused a hard drive from an old PC. Even though I did perform a fresh install (W7 64bit), my new motherboard (Asus P8P67 Pro) doesn't like the old HDD one little bit and randomly blue screens (if I plug the HDD into a different SATA port after a BSOD it will work again for a while). I bought a new secondary drive (mainly for installing games on) which has quite a bit of stuff on. If I was to buy a new primary drive for windows, am I looking at reinstalling all the games on the data drive? I've not had this situation before, so though I'd ask. Previously I've only ever had one HDD. Thanks in advance for any advice/help PS. I know there is an issue with the SATA ports on the new 1155 boards, but I'm pretty sure this is down to me using an ancient HDD with brand new kit....
You don't normally need to reinstall games - they tend to be self-contained in one directory so you can generally just run the .EXE file in that directory and it will work. It's only software that needs to register DLLs and/or registry settings etc that you would need to reinstall.
Thats good to know and will save me a lot of time if it comes down to a new primary drive. Thanks Daedelus
i seriously wouldnt reocmmend just copying over game folders unless it was steam. some games will work other may not and other may start to crash. dont be lazy just re-install them but save your saved game files
You can't break anything though by just running the EXE. Most games don't need to be reinstalled so why bother? Any DLLs they need are in the same directory, there are no special registry settings so why the need to reinstall? The worse thing that can happen is the game won't run, in which case - reinstall. But it's not something I would do as a first port of call.
Personally, I'd recommend reinstalling those games rather than just copying the folders over. As has been mentioned, entries are written to the registry etc. and files are written to other locations and simply copying and pasting may cause the game to work incorrectly. For the amount of time reinstalling would take, why bother with the hassle?
I agree, some games will work and others won't. I am in this same situation as I have recently reinstalled Windows. Although I know some or most games will work, I will first import all the save game data (my second drive used to be the C: drive so still contains everything from my previous windows installation) before using the drive as a dedicated game drive and reinstalling all my games.
Just remember that your save games are probably not stored in the same place as the actual games. So wether you decide to reinstall or not, remember to copy your save games. In Windows 7 they are sometimes in; c:\users\username\AppData\Roaming\ or c:\users\username\My Documents\ Hope this helps!
You could always go the extra mile and copy the registry setting across as well for the games that need them. If on 64-bit Windows, game settings for a 32-bit game should be under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Wow6432Node. Then just right click on the entry that you want to export, and click Export (duh... ) Regedit doesn't allow multiple select though, so you would need to export each set of keys (per game) separately. Out of all the games I have (including Steam games and Steam itself) none are 64-bit, so all the registry keys are in Wow6432Node. Depending on how many other entries there are in Wow6432Node, it might be easier to export the entire Wow6432Node key and then edit the exported file manually to remove all the other unwanted program keys.