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Thread: Installing games so files are accessible from XP & Vista installs

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    Installing games so files are accessible from XP & Vista installs

    Hi,

    Bit of a noobish question, but I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction...

    I'm wanting to buy a new (larger) hard disk for my laptop. Currently it has Vista installed. I want to install both XP and Vista on the new HD, and have games installed/playable when booting from either OS.

    What's the best way of doing that, without wasting loads of disk space having game data files duplicated? I thought of installing a game in XP, then installing it in Vista, then somehow replacing the data files on the Vista partition with links to the files on the XP partition. (Maybe use junction points???)

    I'm assuming I can't just have a separate games partition and install a game there using XP (say), because while the Vista install could see the game files, it wouldn't have been installed there (so no Start menu or registry entries for the game when using Vista).

    Has anyone tried doing something like that? Are there any programs/tools which could simplify the process? One problem might come when uninstalling a game from one OS; that could make it unplayable from the other OS.

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    jim
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    Re: Installing games so files are accessible from XP & Vista installs

    I suspect that the only viable approach would be to create a games partition, separate from the OS installs.

    Boot XP, install game to F:\Games\, boot Vista, re-install game to F:\Games. That *might* work, because it will create the necessary registry entries and application data stuff for each OS, and hopefully just overwrite the data on the third partition.

    If you uninstall, then yeah I suspect that would break it. And the other thing will be savegames. Some games save in their own directory, which will be fine, but others might save in My Documents. Which will presumably vary between OS's - depends how you've got it set up.

    No idea though, never needed to try tbh

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    Re: Installing games so files are accessible from XP & Vista installs

    i dont think it would work due to settings....but chances are if its a "direct play" kind fo game (that does not need anything like DRM or a cd to be in the drive) then it would work, i only know this as we did it at network games with utgoty lol
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    Re: Installing games so files are accessible from XP & Vista installs

    Install twice, point each installation to install to the same location. Don't uninstall.

    Save games are the only issue, but that's no different from having two users play the game for games which save user specific profiles/saves, so here you might be able use junction to create a common My documents sub-folder, but better would simply be to have a batch file sync the files each time you log in for example.

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    Re: Installing games so files are accessible from XP & Vista installs

    some games run straight from any disk.. it's wjy I have a hard drive for just games.

    IL-2, Dungeons and Dragons Online.. both run off anything. I run IL-2 off a USB hard drive

    But CoD5 is a mare.. it installs game save files and stuff in other places and also takes note of the PC name, so after a new install of an OS it needs installing fresh and patching.. takes ages

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