Installing Games after reformat from ex hard drive?

Ok, i was using vista and had ALL my games installed which i saved into a games folder which is now around 70GB, i then reformatted to windows 7 Enterprise Trial (RTM), my games still being on my ex HDD are still there, how ever it asks me to install them, is there a way to use them again without re installing them?

I was going to google for it but...what would i google?

 

If they have a repair utility you'll need to run that. Basically it reinstalls the game.

If not you'll have to reinstall them.

The way windows works and its registry files and crap like that, make it super hard for people in your situation to move anything between computers, harddrives or anything like that.

 

You will probably have to reinstall the games.

The installer script will put entries into the system registry. These can not be fixed. Some of this information can include serial number of the game, CD key, system information such as amount of system memory, type of CPU, dial up or LAN, location of important DLL files,,,,,,,, and other information.

If you are going to be formatting your system a lot, you may want to take a look at Steam. Its a free content delivery system. Games installed through Steam do NOT have to be reinstalled on the computer. You can keep the games on an external hard drive, wipe the system clean, reinstall steam and you are ready to play the games.

Reinstalling Steam takes about 10 minutes. As compared to reinstalling 70 gigs.

Welcome to Steam

There are a lot of other the counter games that you can activate and register through Steam.

 

Thats not true..

After i reformatted i had steam installed on the ex hard drive along with all other games which are on my steam account, i tried running steam and it wouldnt work, so i downloaded it and installed it onto my ex hard drive in the same place and it still didnt work, the only games i reinstalled where CSS as i play that the most often out of all my steam games..

Well it didnt work for me, i dont know about others..

 

I have never heard of anyone having to reinstall the games when all the game files are already in the steam folder. I have personally reinstalled my operating system lots of times, and have never had to reinstall a steam game.

Did you install Steam to the same directory as before and over write your old steam install? Or did you reinstall to a new folder?

Install Steam - point it to where the old install was - over write the original steam install - launch steam - and your games should appear.

If the game shows not to be installed - right click and install. Since the data files are already under steam, it should take minutes for steam to scan the files and add the game to you games list, instead of hours to download.

I have done this a bunch of times and have never had to reinstall/redownload a Steam game after format/reinstall of the OS.

 

I just play MMOs and don't even have to move them. They are all sitting on a network drive and I can just play them from whatever computer I want without copying them somewhere or moving them. Even borrowed my mother's laptop for a week and all that I had to do was establish a network share to the drive.