Reinstall Games on Vista?

[Hawk1]

I plan on installing Vista ultimate 32 on a separate HDD this weekend. Question is, can I reinstall my current games that are on my XP Home SP2 HDD, or will I run into CD Key already used issues? Not a big deal if I can't but would be nice to test them out in both systems.

[Richieb0y]

yea i want to know that too b/c i have the all in one vista(lol)

[MrPontus]

maybe it depends on what games you are talking about.
most games no problem
if you have Bioshock - Big problem ;)

the CD-key already in use you get ehen trying to play online on two computers at the same time.

[Kursah]

Yeah, I've found some games are fine if on a seperate partition/HDD from the windows install, hell I have never had to re-install Supreme Commander, Quake 4, Serious Sam 2, WH40K - Dark Crusade, Guild Wars, or NFS: Carbon, they all worked fine between my mult times switching between Vista and XP (at least 3-4). But games like Oblivion and C&C 3 don't take too kindly to changes. I backed up the stuff in the My Documents folder where they tend to keep save games and extra junk, but that didn't seem to help. And like MrProntus said, I'm sure Bioshock will be another one of those with a problem, but more unique to itself.

All you can do is test your games after you're done, and if you backup your savegames, the worst you have to do is re-install.

:toast:

[Hawk1]

Thanks for the reply's guys:toast:. Installed Ultimate yesterday. Will try installing my games a second time tonight or tomorrow and see what happens (mostly online play - ie BF2/2142, SupCom, HL2 etc. so I gather should not be a problem).

[Darknova]

As long as you don't play the games on Ultimate and XP at the same time you'll be fine, so don't go giving the XP HDD to someone else :P

[lopux]

You can use software tools to move your games from XP to Vista while you sleep. In many cases they will actually manage to move non-Vista compatible games… =) I had problems installing FarCry on Vista, but when I used WindowsRescue to grab it from XP and when I restored it on Vista, it worked fine.