How Best To Move Huge Ts Installation To New Pc?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Kim Olesen, Dec 21, 2022.

  1. Kim Olesen

    Kim Olesen Well-Known Member

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    I’ve ordered a new pc (arriving 22. december). Since it would litterally take an enormous amount of time to install everything from new and then install the huge amount of freeware/mods i’ve got, will this work: Install steam on the new pc. Point steam to the new d drive on the new pc. Then copy over my railworks folder from my latest backup.


    Will this cause problems with third party addons? I am particularly thinking about RSSLO products not bought on Steam, since i’ve heard they have deep copyprotection scripts.


    What are your experiences, many of you must have been in the same situation.
     
  2. Doomotron

    Doomotron Well-Known Member

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    It's probably best to just install it from Steam and then copy over things later. If you have the installers or ZIPs saved (which is a sensible thing to do) then you can just reinstall everything and because you're not copying everything over you'll end up with only the things you really want, resulting in a smaller and faster installation that's less cluttered. It is a lengthy process but much better than just copying over the RailWorks folder (or even Assets, Content and Manuals folders) because there's much less chance of something being broken and therefore needing you to fix it to actually use it.
     
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  3. trevkiwi

    trevkiwi Active Member

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    There are probably a few ways you can do this. Maybe buy yourself a portable HD enclosure and take the HD with TS out of your old computer and put it in the enclosure then connect it up to your new computer then copy TS over to your new computer. I'm not sure whether you could do this through Steam by pointing Steam to the drive in the enclosure. I have just moved my TS installation from one drive to a new drive via Steam about 300GB with both drives on the same computer.
     
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  4. Pookeyhead

    Pookeyhead Well-Known Member

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    This will work just fine, yes. Install TS as if it's a new set up (which it is) and then just copy your entire old Railworks folder over the new one, replacing any files that are already present on the new one when prompted to do so.
     
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  5. triznya.andras

    triznya.andras Well-Known Member

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    Steam uses so called libraries.
    In it there is a steamapps folder.
    In it there is an appmanifest for each game. TS is 24010.
    TS itself goes into the common folder under the name RailWorks.
    There is also some data in shadercache and workshop subfolders.

    So. The absolute easiest thing to do is to copy your entire library and simply adding it (entirely) to Steam.
    After doing so, Steam will recognize that you have TS installed. May need to run it once from Steam so that it runs the install scripts.

    If you don't want to preserve the entire library (when you only have the default one on your C drive), you can selectively copy the files I mentioned above. It's pretty much self contained. Close Steam, copy, start Steam. It will pick it up as installed.

    There have been a few years since I actually did this, but I did. :) I had a failing drive (cable) and as a short term solution moved the game like that between libraries.

    ps.: The main reasons you could want to do this are to avoid downloading hundreds of gigabytes of data upon reinstall, or to preserve your workshop (and extinct 3rd party) as a fresh install doesn't have them and you can and up in the workshop extract garbage loop. Otherwise I'd recommend a fresh install since it trains the how-to muscle on top of being a clean situation.
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2022
  6. mindenjohn

    mindenjohn Well-Known Member

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    Why not take the drive out of one computer and put it into the new one.
     
  7. trevkiwi

    trevkiwi Active Member

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    Yes, that would be the easiest way. I thought about doing it that way also after my post above. I do have an HD enclosure which I have used many times when putting software from one computer to another one. Take the HD out of your old computer and put it into the HD enclosure and connect it to the new computer by a USB cable.
     
  8. Kim Olesen

    Kim Olesen Well-Known Member

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    The problem with just doing that is the copyprotection scripts from some third party developers such as RSSLO.
     
  9. I don't think you can just transfer the whole game from one pc to another, unless you know how to add the registry keys?

    You might be able to do a steam file verification and maybe steam will add the registry files but really your better off installing everything from scratch to eliminate performance problems.
     
  10. 749006

    749006 Well-Known Member

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    If you get an external Hard Drive and copy the Assets and Content folders to it
    Install Steam on to your new computer then Close Steam

    Copy the Assets and Content folders to the new location. Do the Assets folders a bit at a time - I did them alphabetically
    When you open Steam it will check you have all the *.ap files in the correct folders and ignore them

    I took the opportunity to not install most of my US DLC as I don't play those routes very much

    You won't have a problem with your RSSLO DLC as it installs a small file that shows you as the owner.

    Peter
     
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  11. mindenjohn

    mindenjohn Well-Known Member

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    I had a motherboard failure and moved the hard drive from that pc to my other.
     
  12. trevkiwi

    trevkiwi Active Member

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    As Peter said no need to worry about it as there is a file in the software saying that you own it. That file is most probably in your computer's registry.
     
  13. Peter Hayes

    Peter Hayes Well-Known Member

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  14. trevkiwi

    trevkiwi Active Member

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    I have quite a lot of RSSLO Assets and have never had any issues when changing TSC to another drive.
     
  15. Kim Olesen

    Kim Olesen Well-Known Member

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    Neither have i. But moving to a new pc can be different. Lots of users on rail-sim.de have had issues in the past.
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2022
  16. trevkiwi

    trevkiwi Active Member

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    Why not contact RSSLO through their webpage? There is a contact email address at the bottom of the page.
     
  17. 749006

    749006 Well-Known Member

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    Anything purchased directly from RSSLO can still be downloaded from your account.
    It is only the repaints and scenarios you need to copy to another drive
     
  18. trevkiwi

    trevkiwi Active Member

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    I did build a new computer 2 years ago and just took some of the drives out of my old computer and put them into the new one including the one with TSC on. I also put in a new SSD which I put a new installation of Windows 10 on. I had no issues with my RSSLO software which I think came from Steam over the years.
     
  19. Kim Olesen

    Kim Olesen Well-Known Member

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    RSSLO from steam, and bought from their homepage is not the same thing. Steam is the copy protection in itself, but addons bought directly from developers has different copy protection.
     
  20. mindenjohn

    mindenjohn Well-Known Member

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    All my RSSLO (and I have almost everything) came from their site. I have had no problems at all.
     
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  21. Kim Olesen

    Kim Olesen Well-Known Member

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    I took the chance. Everything seems to be fine. Except signalling has become excruciatingly slow. Might be a sign of a copyprotection scheme.

    But later i’ll just re install all the routes, see if signalling get’s better.
     

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