Vista and backing up Guild Wars

1) I am a current XP user moving to Vista Ultimate 64-bit. I was thinking of doing a clean install after reading on some websites the "Update" install has some performance issues. Any thoughts?

2) How do I back-up Guild Wars? Do I just need to copy the whole folder onto another HDD/iPod/DVD etc?

Any thoughts/tips for Vista/guild wars would be appreciated. However, avoid criticizing Vista. Thanks.

2. All you need is gw.dat file from your GW directory. Copy that only a DVD/HDD/etc.. then when on your Vista machine, install the game client (either using the CD's that came with your games or off the GW site) and then copy the backed-up gw.dat file into the Guild Wars directory.

Viola.. GW on Vista and no need to d/l patch's and such.

the GW.dat file is somewhat large.. between 3-5gig.
Mine is: 3.7gig
I've seen people saying theirs was closer to 5gig.. but these are people who had the game installed since the world previews.. so they had a lot of stuff in their gw.dat that was not needed anymore.. LOL

kamatsu's right, GW.dat is 99/9% of what you'll need to copy, but if you're going to do that don't just copy the .day file and forget your templates! Also it could be handy to bring along the .exe too.

dat file, exe file, templates. That's all ya need, kinda makes me ya consider buying a flash drive and have a portable GW doesn't it?

Actually rather than download the client or re-install from CD, just copy the exe file as well as the dat file. When ready just run the exe file and it will set itself up (ask where to install to etc.) just accept the default which is the directory it is in and your good to go, puts the icon on the desktop and everything.

As for vista, if I was you I would hold out installing for a few more weeks until service pack one is finally released. It's gona fix alot of problems and instead of 200 small updates you can just get one big one. Not quite sure of the exact date of it's release yet. I'm gona do a clean reinstall with it when it finally comes out though..

1. Personally, I would do a clean install anyway. Any installation of Windows gets cluttered with lots of junk, and a clean install is a good way to get rid of it.

2. The easiest way is to just copy the whole folder. As Tois pointed out, when you run gw.exe it will set itself up, however, I'm not sure how this works in Vista. You may need to move some folders around.

Be warned though, I have found that vista pcs really really hate having the .dat file moved about from pc to pc. For some reason whenever i do it, it becomes unreadable (i've tried it on several vista machienes now, with several different .dat versions, and even from xp to vista perhaps i am doing something wrong but it will not be read!) so be prepared for having to -image over night!

If you want to make backups, just save your templates and screenshots.

I recently installed GW on my server computer and it was painless. I used my Eye of the North DVD and then did a quick -image to get fully updated. Almost all of your settings are now saved server side so it's a breeze to reinstall.

The one thing I wish they changed was that you only download .dat files for the campaigns you own.

Thus there would be a few more, but smaller dats for:

• Core
• Prophecies
• Factions
• Nightfall
• Eye of the North
• Bonus Mission Pack

It would make updating easier, and most likely save ANet bandwidth (which in turn saves them money) since a person who only has Prophecies and Nightfall would only need to download the Core, Prophecies and Nightfall dat files.

Agree, especially in the past they had the bug which made the dat file 4-5 gb in size due to downloading factions files twice.

I suspect this is how it's going to be done with GW2.