Registry saver app?

AshleyC

AshleyC

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ok I'm going for a third attempt at getting W10 on my PC this weekend but this time will do a fresh install rather than an upgrade. BUT what im dreading is a reinstall of all my apps and games after the event.

My set up is 1 drive for the OS, one for lightroom / photoshop and all my photos and one drive for games and other apps. So if i flatten my OS drive for a fresh install that will give me a clean fresh registry that will knacker all my installs on the other drives.

So, is there something out there that will just save out the registry settings for selected applications so that i can just put them back in once the OS has been reinstalled? I know you can export registry settings to a text file but i would have to do that manually for every app with the threat of maybe missing something out.
 
I'm not sure what OS you're upgrading from, But presumably the registry entries may not work with a different OS. Be careful restoring entries.

FWIW, I upgraded to windows 10 on numerous workstations laptops and tablets. I didn't have to reinstall any of my games or apps! I have a mix of Origin and Steam games with a few others.
 
im going from windows 7. I just assumed there would be at the least path settings in the registry telling the OS where the apps were. But if i can get away with it and they will still work then all the better :)

Although im not planning an upgrade, this is a drive wipe and fresh install.
 
Sorry if i misread. :-(
Yes you will have to reinstall your games if you're starting from scratch OS wise, A lot of them will add some cheeky DLL's in the windows folder etc so once that's gone, no more game! I don't think the regediting will change that.
However, i've never bothered trying to resurrect a game once installing a new OS from scratch. It used to work with old games where they contained all their files in their respective folder (Quake2!), but now they appear to spread out all over the place.
Be sure to backup your saved games also if they're not saving on a Steam cloud.
 
cheers, i didnt think about the dll's and things. I just assumed they would keep them all local :) too much like common sense. Ah well i will just bite the bullet and reinstall things.
 
Are you talking about over-writing your existing installation instead of just upgrading it?

In which case you will most likely have to reinstall the applications. Simply exporting/importing registry keys will be probably won't make the applications work - some of the registry keys will refer to files. And I suspect the applications will pull in different dependencies when they are installed depending on the OS they are installed to. A world of pain awaits that way.
 
AshleyC said:
a fresh install that will give me a clean fresh registry that will knacker all my installs on the other drives.
Click to expand...
Is there a good reason you have installed application to other drives? As you have now found that is adds unnecessary complications and there is no real benefit in doing so.
 
redsnappa said:
Is there a good reason you have installed application to other drives? As you have now found that is adds unnecessary complications and there is no real benefit in doing so.
Click to expand...
The performance & usage benefits can outweigh the complications if you are looking for a compromise between performance, capacity and resiliency using different disk technologies. The method is used for workstations and servers alike in home and enterprise environments.
If your budget allows then you can purchase multiple instances of the fastest SSDs. But typically it doesn't work that way once you reach a certain usage requirement.
 
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There maybe some benefit with games that are continuously reading from disk, which I imagine some of the big titles do. But in most cases unless the location of the user profile has been tweaked, they will still be caching to the OS disk.
 
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