Steam question

Johnny_Nucleo

Johnny_Nucleo

Just wondering, I am spoiling myself with an Alienware M17x(damn the wait is killing me!)

I would like to simply copy the steam directory over to a new laptop rather than install from disk. Will having this on a new machine affect any validation when I go to play SR3?

Not very familliar with steam and I want to avoid any hassle, so any input is appreciated,

thx!
 
Yes and no. You will still have to download steam and install Steam. You'll then have to log in via Steam.

HOWEVER, you CAN copy the "steam\steamapps\common" directory contents over to the new laptop. Then when you go to run a game from Steam, it'll first do a check of the game's contents in that directory, say "Ok, looks like these files are good!" and download the few you might be missing from other directories (config etc).

That's a handy trick too if you have a game you want to flush part of and re-download without the 8+gb worth of data. Copy the big data files out of the game directory somewhere safe, clean out the game folder. Put the files back, then go to run the game. Steam will only download what it needs. (I use this trick on things like Fallout NV/Skyrim/etc, when I'm too lazy to go and sift through 500+ mods installed)

Also, I have an m17x myself. Older one. Very nice computer, not sure if it's so worth the price but it is a beast of a machine. Be careful though, it heats up when running hard like there's no tomorrow. Make sure to never let the fans get too much dust, or it'll probably trip the heat shutdown mid-game. :eek:
 
This is how I do it when I upgrade or reload:
* Reinstall Steam first so that it does all its registry updates and things
* Login to Steam
* Logout of Steam
* Then copy over your old steam folder and overwrite/replace the new one
* Launch Steam and it will generally do a bunch of small updates for each game

SRTT does use CEG DRM though so it will redownload the SRTT executables which is only like 83mb. It does this anytime you verify integrity as well.

Just make sure NOT to delete your old backup until you are 100% certain that everything is working correctly. i.e make sure to COPY over the folder to the new box and do NOT move it.
 
Reading Gondar's post, I realize that I also always copy over just the common folder as well and not the full Steam folder, so definitely go with that.
 
Heck, go copy the whole steamapps directory, it includes a whack of gcfs which are the archives used in many games. Some of those will save on download time, some others are useless (SR3 only includes ncfs which aren't critical and are tiny). The main thing though is the username folder and the common folder, which contain valve-specific games and everything else, respectively. The Steam directory itself is amazingly tiny.

BUT, one other directory I'm glad I went and looked over to recall that you might want to save backed up, would be the steam\userdata\ folder. Inside there is a lot of special stuff all in indexed folders, like your save games and configs for games. Saints Row 3 stuffs its own ones in one of those (55230 in my case, not sure if that's a steam game ID or a personal-based varying number or what). Mostly it's just configs you don't need to worry over though.. but it's good in case you have saved games you want to keep.
 
Yes I have an external drive that auto backs up the full steam folder among others so I always have a current copy of all those files. I only have SR3 so I dont have to worry about multiple games. Just didnt want to muck myself up with validation.
 
Do what I do and just copy the entire Steam folder. The first time you run steam it'll set itself up, all you need to do is make shortcuts. I haven't run the steam installer in years.

Then revalidate your games - you _will_ need to do this because a LOT of modern games use CEG copy protection and steam will need to generate a new EXE for you.
 
I didnt' notice above if anyone mentioned this so I'll add this.
You can have Steam on multiple machines you own or have access to, tied to your account. When you log in on machine 'A' to play a game,
then decide to log in on Machine "B" to access steam, your auto magically logged out of machine "A". Just have to relog to access on "A"
again to reauthorize that machine. NO hassles for me.
You may have to 'validate' though. They have a procedure now that notices if there is a new machine or greatly altered hardware. One merely
needs to keep the email up to date. Once done, that machine is validated unless something drastic happens, like a idiot burning upp
a mother board doing a stupid unneeded bios update, like a chimp might do. Then the machine tied to that account might require a new
steam validation.
Mine did.
But I had to reinstall steam from scratch too. Stupid chimp.
 
I just changed MB and processor on my gaming machine and did not have to re-validate.
 
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