Skyrim folder copy paste

[shadow866]

Hello!

Im wondering if its safe to copy your entire Data folder to a external harddrive and then remove skyrim. And then reinstall skyrim and replace that fresh install with my copy from the external harddrive?

Will that mess up the registry or make it unplayable?

 

Reason im asking is because im going to reinstall windows and i really dont want to chase down all 200+ or so mods i already have in skyrim.

Thanks

[hryh23k9823u]

I did it many times, but then, I now use mod organizer so I dont have that problem actually. But yeah I think it's pretty safe to keep your data folder and using it in a new installation. In most cases. If a mod is later broken, better reinstalling it than not keeping all your mods now, I guess...!

[Rayblue]

I backup the whole folder, using WinRAR to store them in 700mb pieces, to a spare drive.

[CGi]

Put simple: if you backup only the game folder, you'll loose your load order, setup and save games, if the uninstallation deleted those files in My Documents\My Games\Skyrim, so backup those as well.

As for copying or moving the whole game somewhere else, no matter if archived or not, it's a simple backup and should work from where ever you put it, as Steam will restore needed system files and registry entries, after moving the game back to an steam library folder.

[shadow866]

Alright thanks. It will  save me alot lf trouble. il backup  My Documents\My Games\Skyrim as well.

My skyrim works just fine. Its just windows 8.1 that screwed alot of stuff up so im forced to revert back to 8.0

 

Thanks for the answers.

[Rayblue]

If you must back up the load order as well, all the needed files are found here:

C:\Users\<your user name>\AppData\Local\Skyrim

[shadow866]

Well reinstalled skyrim but when i copy my data folder and prefs and so on. My Skyrim launcher instantly crashes for some reason. So i guess it was not as simple as copy and paste the data folder. Things usally never are simple

No clue whats wrong

Any special files i should avoid in the data folder that could cause skyrim launcher not to work when i copy the data folder?

 

Edit: Hmm now im getting the error: d3dx9_43.dll is missing, when i tried to run skse. Tried to reinstall directx but it didnt help it seems.

[hryh23k9823u]

Dunno what can cause this, try deleting (backup) your skyrim preferences (the two ini's) and see if you can run skyrim launcher again? You only need to run it to generate new ini's after all, then you'll launch skyrim via skse but obvously it should not crash at all...

[Rayblue]

Make sure the DX you're reinstalling is DX9.0c (June 2010), and read this:

 

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbyerrormessage/a/d3dx9_43-dll-not-found-missing-error.htm

[shadow866]

Make sure the DX you're reinstalling is DX9.0c (June 2010), and read this:

 

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbyerrormessage/a/d3dx9_43-dll-not-found-missing-error.htm

 

Nice thanks. followed that guide and found a program named: directx end-user web installer. And it seems it restored the missing d3dx9 file and now it works just fine.

Thanks for all the help guys.