Am I the only one that finds 5 hour game installs to be wrong?

[rbrim]

I purchased Total War:Shogun2 a couple years ago. I was rather annoyed that I had to not only install it on my PC, but had to install it on Steam. Took forever. A few months later my system required reformatting of the HDD, and resinallation of WIndows. Needless to day I was rather displeased when I learned that the game had to go though another 5 hour reinstall - for a game that was already on Steam's servers, and I was reinstalling for CD (the CD part takes a few minutes).

Last week I built a new PC. I plan to use it to replace my still working older PC. I had issues getting Steam up and running on the new PC, which tech support helped me with. But now, I'm once again staring at 5 hours and 29 minutes of tying up my PC and internet just to reload a game I bought 2 years ago and have on CD in my basement for all that's worth (apparently not much).

I placed a message on the Steam support forum yesterday, but no answer so far. There has to be a faster way to get this done than over 5 hours. Needless to say, I'm not at all happy about how Steam works. I understand the need for software publishers to protect their revenue stream, but sucking 15 hours of non-game time from my life wasn't part of the bargain when I paid my 50 bucks.

Does anyone know if a faster way that this to reinstall a game on new PC? Any help would be appreciated.

Bobby

[CrystalRoff]

you should be lucky some more popular games are 11gb and up. better graphics engine = more space

[bvguthrie]

引用自 lvlrgreen：

you should be lucky some more popular games are 11gb and up. better graphics engine = more space

You're not helping him. Besides, Shogun 2 is more like 25 GB.
To address the original question, you should be able to copy the contents of the Steamapps folder over to the Steamapps folder in your new computer, then verify the game cache in the client. This should eliminate most of the downloading.

[Bardouv]

Something I don't understand:
When I install different games they all require the same installs (over and over) for the first time setup. Like .NET framework 2005 or something.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Is there a faster way to install it? Yea get a faster ISP.
If 11GB takes 5 hours, then u have very slow ISP internet plan.

When u install something nowa days, that means downloading from a server.

So reinstalling a game from Steam, means redownloading all the needed data from a steam server. Forget the game CD, those are usless if the game is on Steam, cause even if you could reinstall using the CD, u still have to download the patch updates, which can still be a few GB worth of data.

Learn to backup your data as you go along and it can save u time in the future.

[rbrim]

Thanks for the feedback (the helpful one at least, thanks bvguthrie). Steam is the problem, not my ISP. Sure I could get something faster, but just for one game so I can reinstall it quickly once a year? Not very cost effective in my estimation. My on-line games run just fine on my cable connection. I just find Steam to be the only slow thing I deal with, and only when I have to go through this with a new or re-staged PC.

[ReBoot]

Does Steam use your whole bandwidth or doesn't it? If it does and your bandwidth is indeed that low, use the Steam backup feature when you uninstall (aka "remove") the game.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Learn to do backups. U can easily backup a game once it has been fully downloaded/updated. And then restore it back again if needed later on to help save u from re-downloading the entire game again.

[Satoru]

引用自 Bardouv：

Something I don't understand:
When I install different games they all require the same installs (over and over) for the first time setup. Like .NET framework 2005 or something.

Because every game requires a specific version of dot net, and ther's no guarantee that your PC has it. Also directx may require specific versions of dlls that you can only distribute and install if you re-run the installer.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Best bet is to download and install the latest versions of these, as games tend to need a mix of them in order to function correctly.

> DirectX (Redist) June 2010

> .NET Framework (Redist) 4.xx

> Visual C++ (Redist) 2005 SP1; 2008 SP1; 2010 SP1; 2012 (yes all of them)
If you have 64bit OS, then u should install both x86 and x64 versions of C++

When finished, reboot and then check Windows Updates and see if there any further hotfixes related to these.