upgrading fromXP -> Win 7 --- Steam Question

[ericlp]

So, I'm gonna upgrade my OS on my game rig. What do I do for stream? I have a few games on it but mostly I still play L4D. When I load up steam on the machine and log in, will I be able to re-download my L4D or do I need to write down code's or anything?

Thanks for your help! Sorry if this has been answered before but I did search.

 

[Mike Gayner]

Just log in to your account and you can redownload it. Or back up your Steam folder and copy it back after you format.

 

[Malak]

Once you login with Steam, on ANY COMPUTER IN THE WORLD, you can download all your games. If you buy a hardcopy of a game in the store, but it's a Steam-based game, you never have to insert the actual DVD into your computer. Once a game is registered to your account, it is forever there and available for download.

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: Malak
Once you login with Steam, on ANY COMPUTER IN THE WORLD, you can download all your games. If you buy a hardcopy of a game in the store, but it's a Steam-based game, you never have to insert the actual DVD into your computer. Once a game is registered to your account, it is forever there and available for download.

And Gabe said let there be Steam, and it was good.

 

[trelin]

In my experience Steam is pretty danged resilient to changes. All I do is move the folder to a backup partition, reinstall, move it back into place and create a shortcut to steam.exe

It'll re-configure the necessary pieces and be good to go, no need to spend time redownloading and reconfiguring all your games.

 

[jlee]

Originally posted by: trelin
In my experience Steam is pretty danged resilient to changes. All I do is move the folder to a backup partition, reinstall, move it back into place and create a shortcut to steam.exe

It'll re-configure the necessary pieces and be good to go, no need to spend time redownloading and reconfiguring all your games.

Does it automatically retain all save games as well, or are they store in 'my documents' or somewhere?

 

[eggrolls]

Originally posted by: JLee
Does it automatically retain all save games as well, or are they store in 'my documents' or somewhere?

That will depend on the game. Valve's games don't store stuff in My Documents, but other publishers' games might.

 

[trelin]

Originally posted by: JLee
Does it automatically retain all save games as well, or are they store in 'my documents' or somewhere?

Good question, I forgot to mention that!

Unfortunately eggrolls is right, each game saves its user profiles and savegames wherever they want. However, the following is really useful for saving time and frustration:

http://forums.steampowered.com...howthread.php?t=840657

Note that the original poster doesn't seem to be updating the front-page list anymore, but more people have added more stuff in the following posts. Hope that helps someone.

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: Nebor

Originally posted by: Malak
Once you login with Steam, on ANY COMPUTER IN THE WORLD, you can download all your games. If you buy a hardcopy of a game in the store, but it's a Steam-based game, you never have to insert the actual DVD into your computer. Once a game is registered to your account, it is forever there and available for download.

And Gabe said let there be Steam, and it was good.

To be fair, all digital game services work exactly the same. Steam is the only one with the downside of being required to run at all times in order to play the games.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: ericlp
So, I'm gonna upgrade my OS on my game rig. What do I do for stream? I have a few games on it but mostly I still play L4D. When I load up steam on the machine and log in, will I be able to re-download my L4D or do I need to write down code's or anything?

Thanks for your help! Sorry if this has been answered before but I did search.

I upgraded one of my PCs from Vista x64 to Win7 x64,Steam was still working fine after the upgrade and it still had all my games still listed so I had no need to redownload or update anything from Steam.

Btw with XP upgrade to Win7 it probably be different ie might have to redownload a few things ,however should not be any major issues.

 

[Gunbuster]

You can also export each game. Then just click the archive file and it will install on your new load.

 

[jlee]

Originally posted by: Gunbuster
You can also export each game. Then just click the archive file and it will install on your new load.

I haven't had great luck with that - if I exported more than one at a time, they wouldn't import again..I ended up re-downloading.

I'll try copying the entire directory when I go to 7 in a couple of weeks - hopefully that'll work.

 

[Atreus21]

Originally posted by: ericlp
So, I'm gonna upgrade my OS on my game rig. What do I do for stream? I have a few games on it but mostly I still play L4D. When I load up steam on the machine and log in, will I be able to re-download my L4D or do I need to write down code's or anything?

Thanks for your help! Sorry if this has been answered before but I did search.

I migrated from XP to W7 and had no problems with Steam.

 

[KeithP]

For games that suppport it, such as Left4Dead, Steam Cloud should save all the game settings. Just make sure to enable it before you upgrade.

-KeithP

 

[gigahertz20]

I upgraded from Vista 32 Bit to Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit and all I did was copy my entire Steam folder to an external HD. Once Windows 7 was installed, I downloaded and installed Steam again, then I dragged my steam folder over to my new OS install. That was it, every game works fine, no need to waste time downloading everything again.

 

[ericlp]

Great. That's all I wanted to know! Now on to getting the new OS set up. Thanks guys.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: Nebor

Originally posted by: Malak
Once you login with Steam, on ANY COMPUTER IN THE WORLD, you can download all your games. If you buy a hardcopy of a game in the store, but it's a Steam-based game, you never have to insert the actual DVD into your computer. Once a game is registered to your account, it is forever there and available for download.

And Gabe said let there be Steam, and it was good.

To be fair, all digital game services work exactly the same. Steam is the only one with the downside of being required to run at all times in order to play the games.

This is not a big deal anymore. When Steam first came out it frustrated the hell out of gamers and it was also pretty buggy. These days our computers have enough ram and cpu that running Steam in the background just doesn't matter anymore. Also they fixed memory leaks and memory management in Steam so it doesn't sit there doing nothing eating away ram. The one problem with steam, which again is becoming less and less frequent is that you need internet access for it to work 100%, offline mode never to work the way I wanted it to back in the day.