best way to move location of install

[butter100fly]

So I now have a number of gamebases all installed in the main gamebase directory I foolishly set to c:\program files\gamebase

I now urgently need to change this to C:\emulators\Gamebase, but I notice there area large number of registry files and don't want to risk altering by hand.

Can someone suggest the best way to move the install dir?

thanks

[K.C.]

This is (what I think) the best way to move your Gamebase data:

- Leave the GameBase frontend where it is: C:\Program Files\GameBase is the default location and there is nothing wrong with that. (see below if you still want to move the program folder)

- Leave the databases where they are, in subfolders under C:\Program Files\GameBase. The database is the folder that contains the MDB file and the subfolders Gfx, Scripts, Sounds and Splash.

- Move all other folders to a location of your choice (Emulators, Games, Screenshots, Music, Extras, Photos), for example to C:\GameBase\<InsertCollectionNameHere>

- In C:\Program Files\GameBase\<CollectionName>, edit the text files Emulators.ini, MusicPlayers.ini and Paths.ini. In these files, find-and-replace C:\Program Files\GameBase with C:\GameBase

Result is that you have a small folder structure under C:\Program Files and most of the files and HDD space is located in a folder of your choice.

GambeBase version 1.2 is quite portable. After following these steps above you can move the folder GameBase (under Program Files) to a location of your choice. There is no need to modify any registry key after moving the GameBase program folder.

[butter100fly]

All media files (so thats extras, games, music, screens) are already somewhere else. I treat them completely separately. I guess I do want portability as this is a backup\transfer thing and I've read the posts regarding portability (bit old now though) but the answers aren't 100% on total portability, and there really are a good deal of reg keys...

I really do need ALL the gamebase files bar media in c:\emulators - should I just move them then and it will work? And if things break then its just simply a case of sort the relative/absolute names in the text ini's?

Thanks for the quick reply, appreciated

[K.C.]

Moving the GameBase folder from C:\program Files to a different location should not give any problems, as long as your databases are stored in subfolders of this GameBase folder (and have the same name as the MDB file inside it).

To test things first, you could copy the GameBase folder to a location of your choice (in your situation to C:\Emulators). Then rename your GameBase folder under C:\Program files to GameBase.old and test it by starting GameBase.exe in the new C:\Emulators folder.
If everything works, you can delete the folder GameBase.old. When there are problems, renaming GameBase.old back to GameBase is all you have to do to restore the original situation.

GameBase creates an amount of registry keys. As far as I know, they are all located at HKLM\Software\GB64 and none of them have to be changed when moving the GameBase folder to a new location.

To make GameBase portable, you need to edit the ini files and replace the absolute paths with relative paths. Note that if you browse to your media files with the frontend (Tools, Paths), the ini files will contain absolute paths again.

[oldstyler]

--deleted-- I just wrote what kc already mentiont about making gb portable...

[butter100fly]

many thanks both, a friendly helpful forum, now that makes a change...much respect

yes I have (just) about enough room to copy before the transition. One thing nags in my mind (if you don't mind).maybe I'm being pedantic but have you ever run a windows system for a long time and then tried to do some work in add/remove programs? Things can get confusing. To properly make an app portable you should be able to remove the add/remove entry, but of course there are some logical problems related to doing this. Any thoughts? Don't worry if not.....

[K.C.]

[butter100fly]

hey..appreciate your help really do thanks

yes I have all dirs under gamebase and all are named after access database

move seems to have worked,yes...couple of things with spectrum and spectaculator, seems to not pick the right zx model,but really it may not have done before, should have checked. the gemus links are blank so maybe its always been like that

What defintely does not work is deliplayer2. I changed the regkeys and looked for all ascii links to c:\program files\deliplayer2 in all configs to no avail. You can't remove c:\program files\deliplayer or certain things don't work eg: shadow of the beast 1 on amiga doesn't recognise the zip fileas a valid music file. Most other things seems to work,just zips that don't have a mod. prefix....hmm...How irritating.....

main question though is if I am going to move this to a new system entirely do I need to copy/paste the reg keys? I see that file links within them are mostly correct and the only pointings to c:\program files are those things that aren't used (eg: the default musicians pics in msx, that kind of thing)

thank you