Reinstalling windows, what to do with my games?

I plan on reinstalling windows soon and I'm wondering whats the easiest way to deal with my games? Do I have to just back up all the save games then put them back when I reinstall? Can I just copy the whole game's folder and skip reinstallation? If it makes a difference, I plan on changing the location of the games in the program files folder (put them all together in a "Games" folder). Is there anything else I should be aware of?

So what's the easiest way to go about this?

Thanks for the help!

 

Do you use Steam? It's much easier to back up Steam games.

As for your non-Steam save games, they can be tricky to find in Vista. They are usually in the user\documents folder, but they can also be in the user\appdata\virtualstore folder. Confusing right?

You don't need to backup the whole game folder, since you will likely need to reinstall the whole thing anyway in order to get the proper registry entries. So I'd recommend just keeping the save games and reinstalling everything else.

 

What Cthulhu said. Only backup your save games because you wil need to reinstall your games after you install windows.

 

Yeah, no steam for me right now .

So I guess I'll start searching for save games then, I've already found some in three different places... I really wish everything was organized a little better.

Anyway, thanks for the help guys.

 

Do like I do, copy the save games/profiles/save folder and reinstall everything. Best idea.

 

I agree. Unfortunately not every developer puts save games in same spot. Usually they are either in:

(1) My Documents
(2) My Documents / My Games
(3) C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data or Local Settings
(4) In a folder in the game install location

I think the "Games for Windows" initiative was trying to change all that, along with Vista to put all games in same folder and all save games in same folder.

But so far it has been a lost cause.

 

When i switched to 64bit, a clean install was required. I put all my games on 2nd partition.

After the clean install on my primary partition, nearly all my games and programs still worked on the 2nd partition. Only game that didnt work was BF2 (probably needed the the old registry).

CS:S still worked, you just had to re-install steam and re-do your gfx settings because it gets cleared due to the new clean registry

Saving my games/program on a seperate partition saved me ALOT of time, instead of re-installing all my games and downloading patches again

I used to use the steam backup feature but you still needed to re-download the patches again.

As for your saved games.... depending on the game it will either save on the program files folder or the My documents folder