Is it a good idea to uninstall/remove old games (hardly/not played anymore)?

[Baasha]

I have a bunch of older games like Age of Empires III, its expansion pack (War Chiefs), FEAR, its expansion (Extraction Point), FEAR 2, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, Command and Conquer Generals, Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, Civilization IV, Rise of Legends, Far Cry, Crysis, World in Conflict, its expansion (Russian Assault), and a few others that I hardly play (many I have not played in more than 2 years).

Do you think its a good idea to just uninstall all of them? Is having these games detrimental to the performance of the system as a whole? I know they just take up HDD space but I don't really care about that. I have almost 3TB of space. In fact I haven't touched Left 4 Dead after L4D2 came out so I'm thinking about uninstalling that too.

Although, I hesitate because it is somewhat convenient to go back and play some of these games from so many years ago; it's nostalgic in a way. This is especially true for games like BF2.

What do you guys do as far as old(er) games on your PC are concerned?

 

[paperfist]

DO NOT under any circumstance remove Civilization IV

They don't mess up your system unless they've included some kind of auto updater like in the case of digital purchases.

Biggest thing you should do is defrag your HD which in your case is going to take eons

 

[Modular]

I generally just leave them on there. If it was a game that I know I'm never going to touch again, I'll uninstall it though.

 

[Barfo]

They do not affect performance unless your HD is almost full so I'd leave them.

 

[Ross Ridge]

What do you guys do as far as old(er) games on your PC are concerned?

I never uninstall games unless I need the space. I've got games that have been "installed" for over ten years, with directories and registry entries copied from hard drive to hard drive and system to system.

 

[Baasha]

DO NOT under any circumstance remove Civilization IV

They don't mess up your system unless they've included some kind of auto updater like in the case of digital purchases.

Biggest thing you should do is defrag your HD which in your case is going to take eons

Lol @ CIV IV bump! haha.. I agree.. I'll leave it there..

The thing about defrag though.. my "games/programs" drive is 2 SAS drives in RAID-0. Is it safe to defrag it?..

I guess I'll leave the games on there then... yay.. time to play some BF2 again!

 

[pontifex]

I usually uninstall games once I am done playing them unless I plan to go back later on and play it.

 

[jonks]

eh, delete it if it's a single player game you completed with little to no replay value and you probably will never play again, but keep the save game files on the off chance you do, or if they release worthy DLC/expansion and you want to reinstall.

 

[FalseChristian]

You as might as well leave them on unless your HD is almost full. It's just common sense.

 

[mizzou]

Dont lose your cd keys

 

[Nebor]

I never uninstall anything, I just add more storage.

 

[crownjules]

I uninstall games I haven't played in awhile. I don't want to buy more storage if I'm not efficiently using the storage I have. It may only cost $100 for a TB of storage, but that's 10 games from Steam sales if I just uninstall a couple old ones.

 

[repoman0]

I never uninstall games unless I need the space. I've got games that have been "installed" for over ten years, with directories and registry entries copied from hard drive to hard drive and system to system.

How do you copy registry entries effectively? I thought programs couldn't really be moved between installs.

 

[shortylickens]

I have one terrabyte just for game installs and all I do is defrag once in a while to keep whats on there moving swiftly. No need to delete.

 

[Ross Ridge]

How do you copy registry entries effectively? I thought programs couldn't really be moved between installs.

Not officially, no, but I don't let that stop me. Generally what I do export the entire registry to a text file and then delete everything but the entries under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software and HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software for the individual games. I then import the (now much much smaller) text file into the new machine. It doesn't always work, sometimes there's some special component that needs to be installed for the game to run, like a codec or font or whatever. In a few cases end up I have to reinstall the game anyways. It was big pain the last time I did it, as I was upgrading to a 64-bit machine and that ment the keys under HKLM had to be moved to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Wow3264Node. The one real nice about doing it this way is that if everything works out then the game is configured exactly the way you had it on the old machine. You don't need fiddle around with options trying to get back the way you were used to.

Some games will work just fine even if you just copy the install directory over, without copying any registry settings. Either way though, as far as Windows is concerned you don't have the game installed, so it won't show up in the uninstall control panel. If you want to uninstall a game copied this way you'll have delete the install directory and registry entries manually. There won't also be any Start Menu or Desktop shortcuts, but you can copy those over as well. If you're running Windows Vista or Windows 7, most games will show up in the Game Explorer after you run it the first time.