American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC) :: View topic

So you didn't copy the installer to the flash, you installed the game to the flash - correct?

That may be my next route - see how much space the installed games take up and just install everything to a flash drive and run it from there....

I DID just try the copying of Mexican American War's old installer file to a flash drive, interesting results.
I had the same message asking if I wanted to copy it without the properties. I said Yes
It copied, then I tried to run it. 1. I don't know if it's something Windows 10 does with flash drives or not, but it seemed to take FOREVER to bring up the installer start screen, then it let me go through and select to install to my computer hard drive.
After another considerable delay, it finally started to install.
2. Game comes up, looks playable (I haven't gone all the way through), but3. it doesn't ask me for my serial number anymore...I wonder if that goes away after you copy the file?? Because I'm reasonably certain that when I uninstalled and reinstalled from my hard drive before (not from flash to hard drive), it asked me for the serial number both times it was installed...

I'm not going to start pirating the games, if this is what it's doing, but it definitely would be interesting to know for sure.

Author:	DBMcWaters [ Fri Feb 04, 2022 4:32 pm ]
Post subject:	Copying installer files?
Has anyone attempted to copy their installer files to a new drive at any point? I have several installers which John and Rich were kind enough to send me back when the store was changing from HPS to JTS. They are copied onto my laptop hard drive. I'm trying to clean up the drive and move files to flash storage, but - when I try to copy the installers, I get the following message: "The file <X> has properties which cannot be copied to the new location. Do you wish to copy the files anyway, without the properties?" I'm going to test it out to see if it works with one of my currently uninstalled games, but has anyone had any success with this? Did you get the aforementioned message? Did it seem to work for you if you copied the file anyway? I know for the ones I have purchased since, I'm not worried, I can redownload them and just download them straight to the flash drive...but I REALLY would like to back up the old installers so I don't have to purchase new copies at the moment.

Author:	Quaama [ Fri Feb 04, 2022 4:55 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Copying installer files?
My computer was full so I installed all the new updates onto a new portable drive I had bought for that very purpose. There were no issues (except for the computer and the anti-virus program trying to stop me because they didn't like [what was at the time] new files untested by them). I persisted and kept telling the computer to install them and it eventually did what it was told. However, just today, when checking something for another member, I discovered that something has happened with two titles (Franklin and Petersburg) that I'd recently purchased for a tournament later this year. They appear on my desktop and seem to work properly (although I haven't yet played a game on either). However, there seems to be no folder for either game. I'm sure I would have told the download to put them in the WDS folder but they're not there in the same manner as the other games which have their own folder. One has installed as WDS\cpf.exe and the other as WDS\cppt.exe. My task today is to investigate what has happened. As they are recent downloads I'll reinstall them if I can't work it out.

Author:	DBMcWaters [ Fri Feb 04, 2022 5:20 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Copying installer files?
So you didn't copy the installer to the flash, you installed the game to the flash - correct? That may be my next route - see how much space the installed games take up and just install everything to a flash drive and run it from there.... I DID just try the copying of Mexican American War's old installer file to a flash drive, interesting results. I had the same message asking if I wanted to copy it without the properties. I said Yes It copied, then I tried to run it. I don't know if it's something Windows 10 does with flash drives or not, but it seemed to take FOREVER to bring up the installer start screen, then it let me go through and select to install to my computer hard drive. After another considerable delay, it finally started to install. Game comes up, looks playable (I haven't gone all the way through), but it doesn't ask me for my serial number anymore...I wonder if that goes away after you copy the file?? Because I'm reasonably certain that when I uninstalled and reinstalled from my hard drive before (not from flash to hard drive), it asked me for the serial number both times it was installed... I'm not going to start pirating the games, if this is what it's doing, but it definitely would be interesting to know for sure.

Author:	Quaama [ Fri Feb 04, 2022 5:35 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Copying installer files?
DBMcWaters wrote: So you didn't copy the installer to the flash, you installed the game to the flash - correct? That may be my next route - see how much space the installed games take up and just install everything to a flash drive and run it from there.... I DID just try the copying of Mexican American War's old installer file to a flash drive, interesting results. I had the same message asking if I wanted to copy it without the properties. I said Yes It copied, then I tried to run it. 1. I don't know if it's something Windows 10 does with flash drives or not, but it seemed to take FOREVER to bring up the installer start screen, then it let me go through and select to install to my computer hard drive. After another considerable delay, it finally started to install. 2. Game comes up, looks playable (I haven't gone all the way through), but3. it doesn't ask me for my serial number anymore...I wonder if that goes away after you copy the file?? Because I'm reasonably certain that when I uninstalled and reinstalled from my hard drive before (not from flash to hard drive), it asked me for the serial number both times it was installed... I'm not going to start pirating the games, if this is what it's doing, but it definitely would be interesting to know for sure. 1. Yes, Windows doesn't like any drive that is not your computer hard disc because Windows is not normally installed on them. 2. I have had no issues with playing WDS from the other drive. They are a little slow in opening (several seconds instead of two or three) but that's it. I've used WDS titles Antietam, Chancellorsville and Chickamauga thus far and had no problems using the other drive. 3. No it will not. Once you have installed it you will not be bothered by such questions. I still keep them all written down in a safe place just in case an update (or something else) may require me to use it later. If the worst happens and you lose games completely the serial number can be used to request the company to provide you with a new download [JTS used to do it and I'm confident WDS will be no different in that regard].

Author:	Quaama [ Fri Feb 04, 2022 7:07 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Copying installer files?
Quaama wrote: My computer was full so I installed all the new updates onto a new portable drive I had bought for that very purpose. There were no issues (except for the computer and the anti-virus program trying to stop me because they didn't like [what was at the time] new files untested by them). I persisted and kept telling the computer to install them and it eventually did what it was told. However, just today, when checking something for another member, I discovered that something has happened with two titles (Franklin and Petersburg) that I'd recently purchased for a tournament later this year. They appear on my desktop and seem to work properly (although I haven't yet played a game on either). However, there seems to be no folder for either game. I'm sure I would have told the download to put them in the WDS folder but they're not there in the same manner as the other games which have their own folder. One has installed as WDS\cpf.exe and the other as WDS\cppt.exe. My task today is to investigate what has happened. As they are recent downloads I'll reinstall them if I can't work it out. @ Col. David McWaters I gave up trying to work out what had gone wrong in my situation. I uninstalled both games then installed them from the download to the external drive. Each one installed within a couple of minutes. Separate game folders now appear for each and all seems in working order. I note now that you said 'flash drive'. I have installed mine on a portable hard drive (1TB [much bigger than my computer hard drive]) that plugs into a USB port. Perhaps the flash drive itself is your problem.

American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC) http://www.wargame.ch/board/acwgc/

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Author:	Karl McEntegart [ Fri Feb 04, 2022 11:02 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Copying installer files?
I also have an external drive, 1TB Seagate USB. I asked a computer whizz here about installing the games onto it. The advice was that whilst it would/should install normally, it might not run properly from the external drive, given the time lag between the laptop and external drive ? I still have 19 downloads left on my current games (2) but laptop internal storage is decreasing rapidly.

Author:	Josh Jansen [ Fri Feb 04, 2022 11:51 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Copying installer files?
I use an SD card on my laptop to store and run the games from. Works fantastic and the cpu thinks its just normal storage. I do run Linux though, so may be a bit different to get to work on Windows or Mac.

Author:	krmiller_usa [ Sat Feb 05, 2022 1:30 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Copying installer files?
I have copied my installer files to both a flash drive and a usb back up drive without any problems, backup both mine and my wife's pc to the usb drive. In fact when I bought a new pc I installed all my my games from the installers on my back up having uninstalled them from the old pc. Started installing my JTS games on a 256 MB flash drive when I bought a laptop so I could play them on it and my desktop. The games take a little longer to open since they are loading over the usb port which is slower that the hdd bus but they run fine. Only problem I have run into is the first time I run them on the laptop it asks for the serial number, once I put it in it is stored in the laptop registry just like it is on the pc and I have had no problems playing the game from the flash drive on either computer. I placed a copy of the file I have with the list of my game serial numbers on the flash drive to make it easy to enter the code. I have a second flash drive that I moved my other games to and have had no problems running games such as WitE, Matrix version of Battleground games, SPWWII on either pc. Allows me to play my games on any pc with one installation.

Author:	DBMcWaters [ Wed Feb 09, 2022 1:16 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Copying installer files?
Ken, Did you see any message about certain unspecified properties of the installer files couldn't be copied to the flash drive? That's what I see, but things APPEAR to still work ok when I install from the flash drive. I'm just wondering what properties it's talking about...

Author:	Ernie Sands [ Thu Feb 10, 2022 5:52 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Copying installer files?
For an answer, go to WDS website and send an email to WDS support.

Author:	Christian Hecht [ Sun Feb 13, 2022 2:44 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Copying installer files?
AFAIK, the installer are normal files. If the system asked because of properties these may likely be flags like write protected or hidden. These may very well be a problem if copied to a new location but I haven't seen any installer with such flags, so just copy them and that's it because I don't see that there will be any damage done to the installer files.

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