Question about external hard drive data and different versions of windows

July 9th, 2015, 01:53

Hi, I was wondering if I have an external hard drive with data and some PC games that I used to use with my old laptop which had windows vista, will this still work if I plug it into my new laptop which has windows 7?

So, for an example, I had Gothic 2 installed on my old laptop with my saved games on this external drive, and if I plug it into my new laptop, could I still play the game, even though the windows version is different? (from vista to win 7).

Thanks in advance.

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Arkadia7

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July 9th, 2015, 02:09

Yes it should work with no problems as I did the same with Vista and Win 7. Now the only problem that may arise is some games wont start because of registry changes.

Though that is easily fixed by editing your registry.

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Couchpotato

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July 9th, 2015, 02:53

Quite a few games won't like the missing registry entries, and depending how many you're dealing with, it could be a pain.

I've used Game Save Manager. It backs up your save games, and also the registry entries needed by the games, so they can be restored in these circumstances.

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Ripper

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July 9th, 2015, 03:03

Originally Posted by Ripper
Quite a few games won't like the missing registry entries, and depending how many you're dealing with, it could be a pain.

Only five games out of 100 had a problem for me. So it's not every game Ripper.

Fun Fact: It was mostly EA games with the missing registry files.

Anyway guess I'm lucky as I switched external drives plenty of times like Arkadia7.

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Couchpotato

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July 9th, 2015, 07:12

Wow. I didn't think this would work at all. Thanks.

Pibbur who to his satisfaction notices yet another thing he knew nothing about (until now)

Last edited by pibbur who; July 9th, 2015 at 08:37.

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pibbur who

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July 9th, 2015, 07:23

I just tried it with Morrowind, and it worked beautifully. First, I installed Morrowind (GOTY DVD edition) onto my new computer, then with a save game that I had from my old computer that was on my external drive, I moved it to the new Morrowind installation, and created a "Save" folder (I guess Morrowind hadn't made a save folder yet, because I hadn't played a new game yet) I then started Morrowind, and then loaded my save, and it worked! My character, stats and quests were all in perfect order. Amazing. I didn't mess with anything else either, like use the game save manager that was suggested. Now I'm assuming this process will work with Gothic 2 as well, if this was any indication. Very cool.

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