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Hey there!

I've had to format my system recently, but of course, not without copying my whole BGII directory on a remote computer... Now I don't know why, but I can't seem to get a freshly installed version of the game to recognize my previously saved games!! I tried to install the game and copy my whole backed up directory on the freshly installed one, to no effect... And I've tried to simply copy the savegame directory on the new one, with the same results!

I've been looking on the net for hours for a way to recover these savegames, but I can't find anything...

I'm sure some of you have been in the same situation as I... So what do i do?

Thanks!

 

What operating system are you using? If it's Vista, 7, or 8, it might be because of the "virtual store" feature. Especially if you had UAC set to a different setting on the old install than it is set now.

A common thing when reinstalling is to turn off User Annoyance Control until you've finished reinstalling everything, then turn it back on so you aren't pestered by those annoying prompts with every installer and configuration program or control panel. Maybe you forgot to turn it back on?

 

In your Baldur's Gate installation folder (e.g. CGames\BG2) should be a map called ...\BG2\save. If you put your savegames in that map, it should be able to find them. In fact you needn't even install a new game, you can just copy the old game folder completely to the formatted harddrive and it should still work (possibly you'd have to tweak the baldur.ini to refer to the new location if the path is different to the original path).

It's how I've copied my games from Windows install to Windows install and even to my laptop (which isn't even running on Windows anymore).

 

I found that you have to at least install the game and the expansion, but then you can overwrite the game folder with your old saved one. You don't have to install the patches if you are overwriting.

It's not absolutely necessary to install the expansion, it just affects how it appears in Add/Remove programs and the uninstaller if you ever have to run it. It leaves less junk.

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Oh, back on the problem. There are two save game folders. One called "Save" and the other "mpsave". The former is for singer player, the latter multiplayer. You can move them back and forth, but they will only show up in the type of game the folder is for. It's how you can create your entire party if you want to foresake banter. Just start a multiplayer game, make all the characters, and then save the game and copy the file back to the single player folder.

Here is where the Virtual Store thing I mentioned comes in.
If you are running Vista, 7, or 8, any changes made to the program files directory may be copied over to a "virtual store".
You can find it by putting this into the search box:

Code:

%localappdata%\VirtualStore

Note the % signs.
Inside, should be a "Program files (x86)" or just "Program files" depending on if you are using 64-bit or 32-bit Windows respectively. Note that there is a good chance of both being present, use the (x86) if so.
Inside you should find a folder with the same name as your BG2 directory. Inside should also be a save game folder. Try copying your saved games into the Virtual Store.

Note for this to be the case, you must have at least one saved game, although I believe even the autosave should suffice. You can't do it on a fresh install without starting the game at least once.

Also note this whole spiel about the Virtual Store does NOT apply to anything before Vista. You won't find it in XP, 2000, NT, or Windows 9X.

 

Is that for when you install a game to your Program Files folder? I've never done that, actually.

 

Pretty much yes. If you install to another folder, you sometimes need to alter the permissions so that somebody other than the administrator can edit that folder (I haven't tried any Infinity Engine games on my modern system, I just kept it installed on my old Windows 98SE/XP dual-boot machine. Performance is perfect on that system). As long as you don't need to be an admit to change files in that folder, it shouldn't use the virtual store provided you made sure it was NOT under \program files or \program files (x86).

 

The whole permissions thing about changing stuff in Windows Vista and newer should only apply to the Program Files folder(s). That was part of the compatibility issues we had at work with the switch to Win7 - some programs wanted to alter things in the their installation directory (which was inside the Program Files) and everyone who had this program would need administrator rights to use this program. Obviously, that wasn't going to happen.

I've never had any problems with any of my IE games on Win7 with writing permissions, though they're all installed on a different HDD (SSD, nowadays) than Windows itself.

 

Under Vista, sometimes if the administrator created a folder in the root directory, only that account and the administrators group would have full control to that folder. All other users would be read-only.
It happened to me at least once with the copy of Windows Vista 64-bit Home Premium that my computer came with.
I've since upgraded to Windows 7 professional.

If you made a folder called say Cgames, this would be the case. But if you already fixed the permission on CGames, then treated CGames as a \Program Files (x86) folder for 9x/XP games, any folders you created in \games would have the permissions set correctly. It was only new folders created in the root that did this, presumably because the root permissions were set up the same way by default (for good reasons, in part to discourage the clutter of C)

This also happened once for reasons I can't figure out in Windows XP Professional, but I only recall it happening once and heard of it happened to somebody else a couple times and never figured out why it happened. All I did was make a new folder and rather than the permissions being set so that all users have full control, only the admin, or maybe it was only my account plus the administrators group was permitted to do so.

BTW, the above "problem" is actually quite normal for Windows Server, I think starting with Windows 2000 Advanced Server. Newly created folders in the root directory had to have permissions assigned on who could access them, both NTFS permissions and share permissions (presumably, it IS a server OS) as by default only the person who created the folder and the administrators groups (local and domain) had full control. On the servers, I'm not even sure if regular users got read permission. I can't recall and don't feel like booting a virtual machine to check.