Partition/OS question

[Izzo]

Ok... I got Xp/PRogs installed on C: Drive ....Games installed on a G: drive ..same hard drive ....had to reinstall the OS ...Can I just shortcut the .exe of the game to desktop to get it to play? It just won't show in teh start menu ever?

[YeOldeStonecat]

No..unless you have some old DOS based application or one of the rare Windows based apps which doesn't require an installation.

The installation process "registers" the program with the operating system..installing necessary files needed to run the game. Even though the program may reside in C:\Program Files\blah blah...or D:\Program Files\blah blah...the install process will often still put a LOT of files in C:\Windows and \system, etc...and tell the operating system about them..registering various .dll and sys files and what not. As well as putting many entries in the registry, etc.

In your case..simply reinstalling that program(s) right on top of itself..over the same path you did before...will be fine. And re-run any patches you may have added.

[Izzo]

Thanks

[TonyT]

Actually, if a program installed on a separate partition does not use any of the stock windows dlls (installs its own versions of those dlls in the program's install dir) then the program will run w/out having to be registered. However, some larger programs, such as games, may lose some functionality, e.g. certain functions depend on windows services or other components such as networking.

An easy example of this is Adaware. You can install Adaware on the same partition as windows, then copy the entire Adaware dir to a cd or usb pen drive & run it from there on any computer. You can even copy the copy to the hard drive & run it on a comp in which Adaware was never installed. Many other programs will work this way too. Adawae, when installed, is registered w/ windows, creates registry keys and values, etc. But registration done in smaller apps like this are usually minor such as desktop shortcuts, user preferences, etc.

[YeOldeStonecat]

Yeah..there's exceptions like U3 compliant programs..more and more small utilities are becoming that way.

[Izzo]

Ya, I knew some anti-spyware progs allowed you to do so. When I ran BF2 from just the .exe it asked for the disc...I didn't start it up all the way cuz I had other crap to do ....just wondering.