Playing old games from flash drive.

THE_DriverX
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Playing old games from flash drive.

Postby THE_DriverX » Wed Oct 18, 2017 1:31 am

For anyone that is curious, games like Midtown Madness 1 & 2, NFS 3: Hot Pursuit, as well as others, can be played from external media, such as flash drives. Why? Well, for one, the file permissions can be easily avoided. The games are centralized in one place, easy to access. Also, those sporting mechanical HDD will benefit from 2 things: less fragmentation on OS drive and in some cases, the flash media will respond better (access time) then slower HDD. Of course, if you already using a SSD, then this point is mute. The last thing I say about using this approach is the quick back/restore of all your games and if any, mods or tweaks so you don't have to do everything manually later. As far as playing these games "portable" from one PC to the next does work, but usually all settings will need to be redone. Anyways, I know not everyone is looking for this kind of solution, but I thought someone might be curious (as was I).

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Franch88
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Postby Franch88 » Wed Oct 18, 2017 10:33 pm

Of course, this thing is valid for any old game, I'd say. It's easy make them portable.
Anyway, some games set the savegames in locations external from their folder. Sometimes it's the Documents folder, others they're present inside the ProgramData folders, and so on. You need to see where the savegame of a game are stored and so take note of that directory, both for backup and restore of the savegame.
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THE_DriverX
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Postby THE_DriverX » Wed Oct 18, 2017 11:28 pm

In response to your reply Franch88, I do realise that some people are aware of this, but not everyone is... Not everyone is a guru or tech savvy. Some people don't know that this could be done or were afraid to ask a "dumb" question. I'm not trying to start something, but I wouldn't presume that everyone that checks out these forums knows everything. Some people are noobs and some are geniuses. That's what this forum should be all about.... Sharing information with others that don't know and want to know.

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midtown96
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Postby midtown96 » Thu Oct 19, 2017 2:10 am

If you use a pc with windows 8 or 10
you need to install directplay to play mm1 or 2.
If you will play mm1 or 2 from your usb drive on a pc with windows 8 or 10 that
the game or directplay are not installed.
Dont forget to copy dplayx.dll to the same folder
as the exe file for the game.
Make sure you copy dplayx.dll from a windows 10 pc with directplay installed.
If you copy dplayx.dll from a windows 8 pc the game will not work on windows 10.
You can find dplayx.dll on
32 bit windows = C:/windows/system32
64 bit windows = C:/windows/systemwow64

If you try to run mm 1 or 2 on a pc with windows 8 or 10 and directplay is not installed and you havent copied dplayx.dll to same folder
as the exe file for the game, windows will ask you if you will install directplay or not. The game doesnt work if you skip the installation of directplay.

But if you try to run mm 1 or 2 on a pc with windows 8 or 10 and directplay is not installed and you have copied dplayx.dll to same folder
as the exe file for the game, windows will still ask you if you will install directplay or not but to run the game without install directplay is only skip the installation of directplay and if you only see a black screen, press the windows button on your keyboard 2 times.