About to install win 8 on gaming pc - Origin question

[jonneymendoza]

Hi. as teh title says i am going to install win8.

i currently have steam and origin hosting most of my games as well as guild wars 2.

With GW2 and steam. i have them on a seperate hdd and can simply run the steam and gw2 app after installing win 8 and it will auto update/setup both ready to play instead of having to redownload all my steam games and gw2 game.

Now my question is, can i do the same with Origin? if so, how?

I do not want to redownload all my games again

 

[FM_Fixxxer]

Id totally avoid windows 8, it's a night mare. I got my 40$ refunded from Microsoft through customer support.

 

[zaxour]

Hi. as teh title says i am going to install win8.

i currently have steam and origin hosting most of my games as well as guild wars 2.

With GW2 and steam. i have them on a seperate hdd and can simply run the steam and gw2 app after installing win 8 and it will auto update/setup both ready to play instead of having to redownload all my steam games and gw2 game.

Now my question is, can i do the same with Origin? if so, how?

I do not want to redownload all my games again

If you're running Windows 7, you could always first take a clonezilla backup image of your install, and then attempt an in-place Windows 8 upgrade. That's what I did and everything seems to be working just fine.

 

[stooleywood]

Are you doing an upgrade or clean install?

IF you are doing a clean install, you cannot do this with Origin due to the way the games are downloaded/installed. With steam you can simply backup the "steamapps" folder or whatever it is and move it off-site/off-boot drive and simply copy it back.
Origin does not have this ability.

 

[guitarguy6]

It's pretty ghetto but what I did is copy my origin folder containing all my origin games to my backup drive. The when you re-install, sign in to origin and download like 1 or 2% of each game. Exit origin and copy the contents from your backup onto the new install. Open origin and everything should work fine, at least it did for me.

 

[devil22]

I copied my "Origin Games" folder from "\program files (x86)" to a back up drive, then copied it back after I downloaded and installed origin then closed it. After I opened it again, and selected "download" for the games, BF3 re-installed without a download, but the DLC Close Quarters and Armored Kill, and also MOW:F all re-downloaded..

 

[stooleywood]

I copied my "Origin Games" folder from "\program files (x86)" to a back up drive, then copied it back after I downloaded and installed origin then closed it. After I opened it again, and selected "download" for the games, BF3 re-installed without a download, but the DLC Close Quarters and Armored Kill, and also MOW:F all re-downloaded..

Interesting, whats your bf3 folder size?

 

[devil22]

Interesting, whats your bf3 folder size?

Size: 22.6GB (24,278,398,297 bytes)
Size on Disk: 22.7GB (24,382,078,976 bytes)
Contains: 1,892 Files, 156 Folders.

I've done this several times, CQ and AK always re-download, and I guess MOH:W does too since I tried that once.

 

[stooleywood]

Size: 22.6GB (24,278,398,297 bytes)
Size on Disk: 22.7GB (24,382,078,976 bytes)
Contains: 1,892 Files, 156 Folders.

I've done this several times, CQ and AK always re-download, and I guess MOH:W does too since I tried that once.

I've got about 30ish games on Origin, this didn't work before I know that for a fact. I will try this in the future though, thank you!

 

[disturbed]

When I installed Windows 8, I just moved the "Origin Games" folder to my data/games partition before install, wiped Windows 7 and installed Windows 8, and installed Origin. Then, I just pointed origin to store games in the folder that I moved on my data drive, and they showed up. Just had to select "Download" in origin, and it installed them without downloading anything.

 

[jonneymendoza]

found this.

works for any origin game

Step By Step Guide Below
This is written with the assumption you want to reinstall origin after a windows reinstall, however it works for all of the above scenarios.

1. Find your Origin Games install folder. This is found under Gear Button > Settings > Downloaded Games.For most users, this will be "C:\Program Files\Origin Games"

2. Close down Origin (if its open), Navigate to the folder, and back up all of the game installs In the folder you will find subfolders that are named after all of your games (i.e. "Battlefield 3" ) - copy or move these to the desktop (or another easy to find place) - this may take a while depending on your setup, my games were ~60gb.

3. Uninstall/Delete current Origin install. You'll then need to get rid of your current origin setup. If you're moving from one drive to another, you'll need to first uninstall origin, then delete its install folder. Make sure to select "No" if it asks if you want to keep its settings. If you're reinstalling origin after a windows reinstall, you wont need to do this and can just delete the Origin folder.

4. Reinstall Origin. The natural next step is to reinstall origin in its desired location. It really doenst matter where you put it! Make sure that you've ran the program and logged in, and make sure the games install directory is where you want it to be ( again this is in the settings)

5. Initiate a download for your games. Don't worry! we're not really going to redownload all of your games. This next step makes origin do all of the registry linking and whatnot. Make sure the download has got to at least 0.01% or had created the folder for the game in the origin games folder.

6. Close down Origin, and move your games back. leave the downloads running, close down Origin in the tray and then proceed to move your games that you backed up earlier to the desktop (or wherever) back to the games install directory. When prompted to "Merge Folders" click yes, and select "Move and Replace" if windows asks to overwrite any files.

7. Open Origin up, and install the games! Open Origin back up, and after giving it a few seconds, it should start to read the games. After a few more seconds, it'll tell you it's ready to install! click "install", and you're ready to go!

 

[devil22]

I re-installed Win 8 because I hacked my previous install too much and wanted to start fresh. Any way, what I did this time was, copy "c:\windows.old\program files (x86)\origin" and "c:\windows.old\program files (x86)\origin games" to "c:\program files (x86)", then I downloaded and installed origin, when I logged in, I selected 'download' for BF3, all of BF3 and the DLCs I have (karkand, close quarters, armored kill, aftermath) installed without a re-downloaded, took about 30 seconds. So basically backup and restore both "Origin" and "Origin Games" from "\program files (x86)", then re-install origin over top of it, previously I was only backing and restoring "origin games" so that might have been why I had to redownload the DLC. Hope this helps someone out.