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    So my laptop broke and it has all my games on it how would I get them onto my new computer.

    Discussion in 'Gaming (Software and Graphics Cards)' started by Halo360Fan, Oct 18, 2010.

  1. Halo360Fan

    Halo360Fan Notebook Deity

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    My Acer Aspire 6920 broke. (It cought on fire) I belive the hardrive is fine. All my games had a CD key none where downloaded though steam or anything. I can't turn on my laptop to uninstall them. How would I be able to get my CD keys back if that makes sense. Do I take out my haddrive and reformat it with a HDD External Enclosure and that would get me my cd keys so I can reinstall them onto my new computer? What do I need to do? Thanks!
     
    Halo360Fan, Oct 18, 2010
    #1
  2. rschauby

    rschauby Superfluously Redundant

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    If you bought retail then the CD keys should be with the disc. If you bought digital and not from Steam than you can hope the service let's you redownload.

    Time to switch to Steam.
     
    rschauby, Oct 18, 2010
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  3. hakira

    hakira <3 xkcd

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    Do NOT reformat your HDD, if your HDD survived the fire somehow (lemme guess, a battery fire?) then you have a chance at your stuff being ok, and you can just plop your old HDD directly into your new computer, or an external case.

    And yeah, Steam + monthly backups is a good way to go... sometimes redundancy is a good thing.
     
    hakira, Oct 18, 2010
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  4. fifafreak18

    fifafreak18 Notebook Evangelist

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    I'm kind of curious how it caught on fire.
     
    fifafreak18, Oct 18, 2010
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  5. Bearclaw

    Bearclaw Steaming

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    Take out the HDD and get a SATA to USB adapter and transfer all your stuff onto your new HDD.
     
    Bearclaw, Oct 18, 2010
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  6. Halo360Fan

    Halo360Fan Notebook Deity

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    I got all my personal information off and game saves. If I was just to reformat my old hard drive would I be able to reinstall the game with the disk and my key code would still be good right?
     
    Halo360Fan, Oct 18, 2010
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  7. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

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    keycode should be fine. That's what its there for to verify a legal copy of the game. If you don't have the CD/DVD then you might be out of luck though. However there usually is a way to extract the key out of the registry, but it varies from game to game.
     
    HTWingNut, Oct 18, 2010
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  8. Syberia

    Syberia Notebook Deity

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    I keep a word file of all my CD keys, along with a whole bunch of other junk, backups, .isos, installers, game saves, etc. on my external hard drive. Physical media gets lost or damaged, so I always try to have digital copies.

    Steam lets you re-download your games whenever you want and your login functions as the CD key, but even then it is probably wise to make a physical backup of all your games (I think it lets you do that), since it's much quicker to install that way than to re-download everything. Especially for those of you unlucky enough to have an ISP with a data cap.
     
    Syberia, Oct 18, 2010
    #8