How to launch Skyrim when installed on another drive.

[Zombie Trasher 9000]

It seems impossible and artificially limited!

I've been playing Skyrim for a long time on my primary drive, which is an ssd.
Considering the capacity of this primary drive, i wanted to install Skyrim on my storage
drive, which is a regular hdd.

I can tell you, launching Skyrim when Steam is installed on another drive seems impossible.

Initially when trying to launch the "launcher" you get a complaint about an INI file missing.
After finding this original Skyrim.ini on the internet the launcher will show up, but you get
persistent messages about the game already running if you hit "PLAY".

That can't be right. When i reinstalled Skyrim, Steam offered me to allocate a drive and
create a new Steam directory there, so what's the deal?

I don't really want to reinstall steam and skyrim all together on one disk as it takes not only
long, but i'm not sure what'd happen to all my saves of the other games i have - aside from backing them up..

Has anyone ever managed to run Skyrim from another drive, or know anything about this.
I'd like to see this get fixed..

[Miku]

just move your skyrim files to your hdd then tell steam to remove your files.
next thing is telling steam to install and select the folder, where you put your skyrim files.
steam should recognise the files and everything should be fine then. maybe you should verify your files after moving them around, maybe that loctes your files already as correct on your hdd

[Zombie Trasher 9000]

I'll try that, thanks for the quick response.

[Zombie Trasher 9000]

Doesn't work, I still get the error:

Failed to launch the game (app already running)

Which is non sense..

Also odd is that if the "My Games/" directory is empty, and you try to play Skyrim for
the first time, a child directory "Skyrim" is created without a Skyrim.ini file, yet an error
message appears about an ini file missing. This is a brand new directory created by the game!

[Miku]

do you start the game via the launcher or tesv.ese or SKSE

[Zombie Trasher 9000]

I've tried both the launcher and tesv.exe, but both gave me the same error message.
What i've done now is the following:

- Placed the SteamApps directory (which contains Skyrim too) in my Desktop/.
- Uninstalled Steam
- Installed Steam on the other drive (it was installed on ssd first, now on hdd)
- Placed SteamApps directory in the newly installed Steam directory.

- And now I hope skyrim launches.. I'll let you know.

[Miku]

you dont need to reinstall steam, i moved saints row2 for example and there was no need to switch steams location.
i told you waht i did with sr3. worked for me.

check if there is tesv.exe already running on your pc. if yes, terminate it, then open the launcher and go to options, it can be that skyrim checks your hardware again. if it odes ok if not ok either, since changing and detecting should generate a skyrim.ini

[Zombie Trasher 9000]

Funny thing is I can't open the launcher because there's no INI file. and if I place an ini file found on the net in "My Games/Skyrim/" the launcher opens itself, but clicking on PLAY still renders the error that the app is already running, while this is not the case.. this is really blowing my mind as this is a fresh Steam installation on a second disk.

[Miku]

if you have an ini from the inet, then change the options via the launcher. it should be your ini then and cause no prolems

[Zombie Trasher 9000]

Cool, i didn't know that. I've got my own ini file now, but the game still won't launch; saying: there's already an app running.

I must mention that when i hit "PLAY" in the launcher, I first get a window box (like when you need admin rights to execute a program) asking me if i want to allow the SkyrimLauncher.exe on the other drive to make changes.

I have two options here "Yes" and "No". Where "Yes" gives me: failed to start game (app already running), and "No" does nothing..
There's no second process of the game running, i've restarted and checked my task manager more than once.

[Miku]

sometimes restarting your pc can help a lot :D

[Zombie Trasher 9000]

A restart didn't help. Weird though as I installed SKSE now and through SKSE the game will launch, as it only checks if i'm logged in steam and if my game is valid. Why would steam be so stubborn and show me the "app already running" if i use the default launcher?? That's just silly.

[Miku]

Originally posted by FRONT OF ARMAMENT:

A restart didn't help. Weird though as I installed SKSE now and through SKSE the game will launch, as it only checks if i'm logged in steam and if my game is valid. Why would steam be so stubborn and show me the "app already running" if i use the default launcher?? That's just silly.

i would play like this now :D maybe further tinkering breaks your gaem even more. D:

[Hamsterbytes , bits and nibbles]

I got it to work, but I'll be damn if I can remember how, since I spent 2 days finding a work around for this exact same problem. What I am saying then is, it is possible just alot of work. If I do remember I will put an update in this post.

[Hamsterbytes , bits and nibbles]

Originally posted by NightCore:

Originally posted by FRONT OF ARMAMENT:

A restart didn't help. Weird though as I installed SKSE now and through SKSE the game will launch, as it only checks if i'm logged in steam and if my game is valid. Why would steam be so stubborn and show me the "app already running" if i use the default launcher?? That's just silly.

i would play like this now :D maybe further tinkering breaks your gaem even more. D:

I think i may have done what SKSE does, but it wasn't simple. I now use SKSE too. Yet I was able to get it to play from my secondary drive, It's even an external drive before using SKSE..

[Zombie Trasher 9000]

Originally posted by Hamsterbytes , bits and nibbles:

Originally posted by NightCore:

i would play like this now :D maybe further tinkering breaks your gaem even more. D:

I think i may have done what SKSE does, but it wasn't simple. I now use SKSE too. Yet I was able to get it to play from my secondary drive, It's even an external drive before using SKSE..

Wow nice