|
I have a 2TB external hard drive and I want to put Battlefield 1942 on it. I got the game to install and run smoothly on the hard drive, but then I need a patch update. When I install the patch, the patch installer can't find the game, and thus does me no good. How do I get the patch to find the game on the external hard drive so I can run the game? Any help would be great. Thanks. |
||||
|
|
|
The BF42 patch installers look for the path to the game in the registry at this location: \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\EA Games\Battlefield 1942 in a value named GAMEDIR. On my system that value is d:\Battlefield 1942. You can paste the following lines into a new file in Notepad, change the folder to the game's location on your external drive, save the file as bf42folder.reg, then double-click the file to update the registry. Note that you need to use double backslashes instead of single backslashes in the path to the game.
If you plan to play on the Internet, you will need a key as well, and that key goes in another place in the registry. Without it you can play single player games or on LAN servers, but not Internet games. |
||||
|
|
|
If you cannot find a way to get it to install to a different directory, try this: Symbolic links are a good solution to hosting games on a hard drive that is not your primary drive. They are similar to creating shortcuts, but the difference is that Windows will see them as actual paths, not shortcuts. For example: C:\ is my primary drive. Windows is installed on this drive. I create a symbolic link (very similar to a shortcut) at 'C:\Battlefield 1942' which points to 'E:\Battlefield 1942'. Now, I can install Battlefield 1942 to 'C:\Battlefield 1942', and as far as Windows is concerned, that is where it is installed. But, the files are actually kept on 'E:\Battlefield 1942' since that is where the symbolic link points to! The command for this would be: For this command to work, the target ("E:\Battlefield 1942") must exist, and the link ("C:\Battlefield 1942") must not exist before the command is executed. If you already have your application installed at the C:\ directory, you could copy it over to the E:\ directory (while it isn't running), and then delete the empty C:\ folder before executing the command. The folder will be created again. You can execute this from windows command line. In Windows 7, just type 'cmd' into the search bar within the Start menu and press Enter to open the command line. In Windows XP, go through Start menu, click 'Run' and then enter 'cmd' for the parameter and press Enter! I only used the name 'E:\Battlefield 1942' as an example, you could name this whatever you want. 'E:\games\bf1942' would work as well, or whatever other path/name you wish to give it. This method is extremely effective when your primary hard drive is a solid state drive without much space, but you want your installed applications to be seen on the primary drive. |
|||
|
|
|
One solution could be to create a shortcut to the external drive in the default location. This should fool the patch installer and let it run correctly. (It does seem odd that the patch installer doesn't check the registry to see where the game's installed.) |
|||
|
|
