Getting desktop icons back after all games moved to new pc and drive

[Wickid_Splat]

Hi, i had no problem in running the games after the move to a new pc and new drive, steam made that part easy. However now i have to recreate all my desktop icons all over again which is not easy.

I wonder if anyone has made an app to do this?

Right now my process is this:

Open steam go to library
Click on the game you want
Right click and choose desktop icon (this will put a blank icon on your desktop)
Right click on the blank icon and choose change icon, then click browse.
Open up your new drive location where your games are and open the game file for the game you want. Then find the icon for that game and select it. Then confirm the change.

I am doing this one game at a time and its gonna take a very long time :(

I could just skip the steam step and go directly to the game file but its hard to find the application file in some of these games and it seems faster just to find the icon file.

The issue is that the steam version of create shortcut does not go out and find the icon from the game file and restore the icon, it just puts a blank icon on your desktop.

I would be nice if steam would add a process for this where we could select the games we want to add back to the desktop in a group and it would find the icon in the game file and add it back for us. Or maybe even when we play the game the first time on the new drive it can ask us if we want to restore the icon on the desktop.

Is there a better and faster way to do this?

Thanks dave

[Snapjak]

Steam needs the icon in it's cache (\Steam\steam\games\) for it to not make a blank icon. It usually acquires them when downloading and running the game.

I haven't migrated Steam in a long time, but maybe try launching a game first and see if it does, then create the icon?

[Junglejim5]

I'm not going to read all you said ok but if you don't know how to get DT icons a easy way is to just go into your game files and choose from there simple , or open in a small window showing the file you want as a DT icon and drag it over another window will pop up asking do you want what ever it is to be a DT icon and choose yes .

[Black Blade]

Цитата допису junglejim5:

I'm not going to read all you said ok but if you don't know how to get DT icons a easy way is to just go into your game files and choose from there simple

He dose that
but doing it to too many games can be a real hassle
his asking to automate it

[Junglejim5]

Oh ok , so it's over numerous games not just a few lol

[Wickid_Splat]

yes like 60 games... see jungle if you had just read it lmao hee hee However yes i do appreciate the tips everyone ill just keep doing what im doing a few games a day and eventually ill have them all back.

I dont think it would be too hard for steam to add a migration flag we can set manually right after we copy the games. Then we log out of steam and the next time we access steam it should assume we are on the new system. Then since the flag is set it should ask us do you want to restore all desktop game icons. We say yes and then give it the new drive id and boom done... And it unsets the migrate flag as well. Easy peasy!!!

[MancSoulja]

Цитата допису JohnWayne:

yes like 60 games... see jungle if you had just read it lmao hee hee However yes i do appreciate the tips everyone ill just keep doing what im doing a few games a day and eventually ill have them all back.

60 games takes no time. Try doing it for 600 >_<

[Wickid_Splat]

Yeah i agree 600 is way up there... i did edit my last post and added an idea how steam could do this. Your thoughts on that...

[Wickid_Splat]

Fauxtronic, i dont have 600 games but i do have tons of icons that i have gathered over the years of hard to find content. You do so by using a wonderful little program called fences by stardock. In simple terms you can build blocks of icons on your desktop and label them so you can organize them, it has tons of features. Then when you dont want to see the fences (ie icons) you just double click on the screen and they are gone (hidden). Its very handy...

[Jesse]

This is super old, but for anyone searching this, I wrote a solution to this in Python - though you can't choose which are created, it just makes shortcuts for all installed games https://github.com/JeeZeh/steam-shortcut-generator