Quick/easy registry backups for single applications

Fallingwater · 11 Jul 2015

I'm switching to a new gaming computer and downgrading the old one as a general-purpose Linux box. The old one has Win7 on it, the new one has Win8.1.

In the past I've moved game installs by backing up all the seemingly-relevant registry branches straight from regedit into reg files and restoring them on the new install along with the game folder, but only for a handful of games at a time, as the search and inspection of what to backup is annoying and time-consuming. I have rather a lot more games to move this time around, and I really don't feel like spending a day poring at regedit.

I've googled a bit but all I can find are suggestions on how to backup the entire registry, or programs that just slightly simplify the saving and restoring while still requiring the user to know where all the registry keys are.

Is there anything that'll show a list of all installed software and let me selectively backup the registry entries of selected apps, hopefully all at once?

MilesAhead · 16 Jul 2015

I don't know of any easy way to migrate a slew of games to a different machine other than making an image of the Windows 7 drive and installing it as a VM on the 8.1 machine.

Perhaps some gamers will have some ideas. But everything I have found is about moving stuff to another partition or drive on the same machine.

I suspect you want to run the games on the metal on the new PC, not in a sandbox though.

GokAy · 16 Jul 2015

I use Steam/Origin and few MMOs, so moving them are easy. Just need to backup AppData/My Documents folders for the games' savegame files (for those that don't save to the cloud), and possibly settings files. Settings are normally easy to re-do. I guess it would be harder for retail games to move around?