Getting Windows 7 - How Do I Make Sure I Don't Lose WoW?

[Psychi]

I'm going to be backing up everything on my computer to an external hard-drive. How do I make sure nothing on WoW changes when I want to log back in? I know that I can re-download WoW from battle.net after I login but I was wondering if there is any chance I'd lose add-on settings or anything like that. Would I just move my World of Warcraft folders back into the game folder? A step by step process would be great if someone could provide it, or any comments. Thanks for the help.

[Deleted]

Simply go to the place WoW is installed (usually C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\) Copy the entire World of Warcraft folder to (for example) an external Hard Drive.

Once you have reinstalled, you simply place the folder back on your Hard drive, and nothing will be changed. (make sure you install all the drivers first to avoid fps problems/audio problems)

[Psychi]

Simply go to the place WoW is installed (usually C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\) Copy the entire World of Warcraft folder to (for example) an external Hard Drive.

Once you have reinstalled, you simply place the folder back on your Hard drive, and nothing will be changed. (make sure you install all the drivers first to avoid fps problems/audio problems)

When you say "make sure you install all the drivers first", what exactly do you mean?

[Hasselhoof]

What he means is make sure you install all the correct Video Card, Sound Card, Chipset, and Lan drivers before you attempt to copy WoW back onto to your new Windows 7 drive.
One thing you didn't mention is what OS you are upgrading from, MAKE SURE when you place WoW back on the new windows install drive, you place WoW into the following directory to ensure all future patches update and function correctly:

C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft

If games doesn't exist in the public folder, you will need to create it. Once into the games folder, just copy and paste WoW from whichever data device you've saved WoW to. If you transfer WoW using this method and placing it in the proper folder(s), everything will be just as it was pre Windows 7, addons, keybinds and all.

[Deleted]

Where you place it doesn't really matter though, as far as I know. (Atleast I didn't do it, and I don't have any problems

What you need to do is make sure you've ran Windows Update a couple of times, until there are no more updates, and install your Video Card/Audio card driver. Less important for WoW, but also good to do is to install the latest Chipset and LAN drivers. (Look up the specs of your PC and search for the drivers with google )

[Capt Bob]

When you install Windows 7 you will notice that downloading hundreds and hundreds of drivers is just a memory! Windows 7 have most of the drivers avaible through the Windows Update and this far i haven't had a single problem with running anything on either my x32(x86 for other geeks) or x64 computers.

[Bloodly]

You shouldn't copy the whole folder. I had the problem it couldn't apply patches to right directory, even when I copied the folder to exactly the same place when I got new computer.
If you want your old settings, install WoW normally and copy WTF and Interface\Addons folders only.

[Deleted]

You shouldn't copy the whole folder. I had the problem it couldn't apply patches to right directory, even when I copied the folder to exactly the same place when I got new computer.
If you want your old settings, install WoW normally and copy WTF and Interface\Addons folders only.

I would take that risk though, and if it proves a problem you can simply re-install anyway or download the patches manually. Spending all day (or days even, if your internet is slow) re-installing WoW sort of sucks, if there's such an easy to it in minutes.

[chaud]

You shouldn't copy the whole folder. I had the problem it couldn't apply patches to right directory, even when I copied the folder to exactly the same place when I got new computer.
If you want your old settings, install WoW normally and copy WTF and Interface\Addons folders only.

All you had to do was open the launcher and it would have added the correct paths to the registry for you.

[Psychi]

Alright, so what I should do is just keep the WTF and Interface folders, download WoW and all of it's patches, and then place back in the WTF and Interface folders that I had saved?

[Deleted]

Alright, so what I should do is just keep the WTF and Interface folders, download WoW and all of it's patches, and then place back in the WTF and Interface folders that I had saved?

I'd stick with just copy the entire WoW folder, but indeed that would also work

[Psychi]

I'd stick with just copy the entire WoW folder, but indeed that would also work

I may as well just go with the way that I stated. My friend that is helping me out with upgrading my computer has about a 10 times faster connection than I do so it shouldn't take forever and a day to re-download WoW and it's patches.

Thanks for the help everyone. ;D

[Deleted]

I may as well just go with the way that I stated. My friend that is helping me out with upgrading my computer has about a 10 times faster connection than I do so it shouldn't take forever and a day to re-download WoW and it's patches.

Thanks for the help everyone. ;D

Good luck!!

[Karhazn]

You CAN copy all the files to the right directory (for Win7, it's changed to C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft) but I will give you a forewarning things can break unexpectedly (I did this with my last version of the beta because I was lazy, I had addons reset 5/6 times before I got retail). If you're just looking to keep your addons/fonts. Copy your WTF/Interface/Fonts (if you have special fonts) into the freshly installed WoW folder and it will work similarly to when you download full UIs.