The Woes of Complete Reinstallation

dragon wench · Post by **dragon wench** » Tue Jun 07, 2005 10:57 am

Recently, due to some nasty infections, I ended up losing all of the data on my machine, including my game saves and mod collection.

I'm presently thinking I might like to play Morrowind, but the thought of redownloading, and then installing, all of the mods I have come to view as essential just makes me feel tired

Does anyone else ever encounter this problem ?

Magrus · Post by **Magrus** » Tue Jun 07, 2005 11:38 am

I've had it a few times yes. Friends destroying my hardware or getting virus's on my computer have left me with a ton of data disc's of backing up my system once a month, just to be safe. I did once make a disc of just game save's for this specific reason. I saved all of the morrowind saves, some older game saves, BG and there was one other.

Still, the time it takes simply to reinstall all of the software alone is monotonous and tiresome, then to configure everything, and if you use mods to find and download and install those. Then to start a new character...there's a few games I look at now and just shake my head and don't bother with. I went SO far in them and lost everything. It's too depressing to start over anew without that feeling of accomplishment in finishing the game with those characters I'd almost beat it with.

moltovir · Post by **moltovir** » Tue Jun 07, 2005 11:53 am

Reinstalling is not that bad

Last time I did it it took me +- 1,5 hour to find (finding was harder than downloading) all the mods I wanted, especially with tesmods being down, but in a way it was a good thing too: on my previous installation my Data Files folder was filled with crap mods I had never used, so the reinstall let me restart with just a small amount of my all-time favourites. It still took me another 15 minutes to solve all the conflicts though

fable · Post by **fable** » Tue Jun 07, 2005 1:07 pm

DW, PM me about your mods.

Denethorn · Post by **Denethorn** » Tue Jun 07, 2005 1:28 pm

DW thats happened to me many a time. Especially with Morrowind, so I keep all my mods in a nice little "Installed Mods" folder. It's a bugger to reinstall them all again, but its better than re-downloading

.

I hope Bethsoft improve the plugin functionality in Oblivion, make installing/running many mods alongside each other easier and more efficient.

dragon wench · Post by **dragon wench** » Tue Jun 07, 2005 3:01 pm

@Fable,
once I get the game installed, I will do

@Denethorn,
yes indeed! I actually had a folder of installed mods too, but they were lost along with everything else... *sigh*

Bloodstalker · Post by **Bloodstalker** » Tue Jun 07, 2005 5:35 pm

What I do is DL all the mods I want, patches, etc, put them all into a single folder, and then immediatly copy that folder onto another computer on my home network. From that point, If I ever have to redo my system, it's just a simple matter of pulling the folder back from the other computer without all the hassle of seraching for things again. It's a lot easier that way, esp for a few older games I have that I still play from time to time that it's damn near impossible to find the patches for anymore. This won't be much help for the present situation, but if you have a network at home, which I think I recall you saying you do, it will make it much easier for any future problems you might have with losing things.

Magrus · Post by **Magrus** » Tue Jun 07, 2005 6:05 pm

I just keep a little cd case of data files. Pictures, text documents, important stuff, game files, movies, etc. Including movies, I've got about 45 discs. Some are update versions, I should go through and clean out the older ones that are outdated and what-not. Still, I have my EYE of the beholder, Morrowind and BG saves from 2 years ago on a disc somewhere.

fable · Post by **fable** » Tue Jun 07, 2005 7:24 pm

I've got a hard disk backup of my drive, made every week.

Denethorn · Post by **Denethorn** » Wed Jun 08, 2005 12:36 am

Yeh I use partitions too

. Windows XP sits snugly on its own little 5GB partition, and if I ever need to reintall/reformant, I can reformat individual partitions, moving data around as I go along.

Careful to take the virus with me ofcourse

fable · Post by **fable** » Wed Jun 08, 2005 5:49 am

Denethorn, I'm actually using a standalone hard drive for a backup. I've got great transfer rates from/to it, and it's come in handy on at least two occasions, one when spyware had entrenched itself on my regular hard drive.

giles337 · Post by **giles337** » Wed Jun 08, 2005 11:23 am

[QUOTE=fable]Denethorn, I'm actually using a standalone hard drive for a backup. I've got great transfer rates from/to it, and it's come in handy on at least two occasions, one when spyware had entrenched itself on my regular hard drive.[/QUOTE]

Thats something I've been considering. What kind of tranfer rate is "good?" It seems a rather expensive option.

Nice to see you BS

fable · Post by **fable** » Wed Jun 08, 2005 2:06 pm

Briefly, before upgrading, I had a SCSI 1 interface, and the transfer on roughly 20 GB material to 10 hours. Now, with a SCSI 2 inteface, it takes less than 30 minutes.

I keep all my MW mod archival files in a special directory, so I can access them separately from everything else. Makes it simple to find things. Too bad it's already 6 GB.

IdaGno · Post by **IdaGno** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 5:51 pm

[QUOTE=dragon wench]Recently, due to some nasty infections, I ended up losing all of the data on my machine, including my game saves and mod collection.

I'm presently thinking I might like to play Morrowind, but the thought of redownloading, and then installing, all of the mods I have come to view as essential just makes me feel tired

Does anyone else ever encounter this problem ?

[/QUOTE]

backups are for sissies (& those who value their time!

)

am currently in week 2 of re-installing MW GOTY edition - still downloading & manually installing a ton of mod's (this is either gonna be great or a total meltdown)

anyway dw, don't feel like you're the only one - to me, this game is definitely worth the effort

fred · Post by **fred** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 6:28 pm

This is what I do, becouse,sadly, Morrowind won't be around forever ( depressing thought I know, but I had to say it ). I download nearly every mod I can, yes many,many I don't use or possibly need,but..........I burn everything on a cd, dvd, and I have some double layer dvd's of just mods. That way NOBODY can ever take this wonderful game away from me. I too have had to reload, currently I need to, I'm going to make a list of the mods I'm using, then dump everything, put all the mods I'm using back in.........from my disks, unless I find an updated one. Yes, big hassle, but I don't have to search and download again ( by the way if someone may need an older one, let me know,I may have it) and by " NOBODY" , that doesn't include my wife, LOL

Rookierookie · Post by **Rookierookie** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 6:40 pm

Burn all the mods onto a CD.

fable · Post by **fable** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 8:42 pm

Agreed. Burning those mods to CD is the only way of guaranteeing you will have them in the future. Recently two of the bigger Morrowind mod boards have closed (one is supposedly reorganizing, the other ran into money problems), while a third has recently shut its doors to new mods because the site owner got fed up with handling it all. You like Morrowind and its mods? Grab what you can from sites, now. CDs cost next to nothing, and you'll never regret in the future that you let the mods go too long.

Ravager · Post by **Ravager** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 2:13 am

Um, what are the best Morrowind mods and where can I find them?

Never mind, I found the Mods Sticky.