More Awesome Than You!

I just bought an 160GB external HD and I've moved all my sims stuff minus the base game onto it.

 My question is, can I deleat the EA folder in My Docs and the files in the EA\Program folder without FUBARing my game? I need the room on my internal HD.

TS2 is hardcoded to use 'My Documents'\EA Games\The Sims 2\ for game file storage. You cannot therefore delete this, but you might be able to turn the directory into a junction link that references your external HDD.

Or move your entire My Docs.

OH, I moved the My Docs folder. It took almost 2 hours. That's why I was wondering if I could deleat the one on the C drive. I now have dup folders.

You have to tell Windows where the new MyDocs is located.

Use the TweakUI utility available at the WindowsXP Powertoys (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx) page.

Run TweakUI, and on the left pane select My Computer > Special Folders.
On the drop-down list select "My Documents" option, and click "Change Location", whereby you'll be prompted to choose the new My Documents folder.
The changes will take effect after you logout and login again.

Thanks Theo, but I don't think that will work for me. I'm running on Windows 2000

I think TweakUI will work on Windows 2K too, or check the MS site for a W2K version. I'm pretty sure that it supports moving the My Docs folder, since Windows XP is based on Win2K code. There might be details on how to do it in the MS Knowledge Base.

If you have the latest Service Pack for Win2000, it's possible (but I'm not sure either) that it will run.

Otherwise, you can try TweakUI for WinNT (http://www.microsoft.com/ntworkstation/downloads/PowerToys/Networking/NTTweakui.asp) ;)

Moving the game from the \Program Files folder might be more complicated, and it will probably require fiddling with the registry to point the game to the new location.

It seems like so many games these days insert save games, etc., into My Docs when it would be far less redundant to just stick the crap along with the rest of the game information on C: or wherever it is installed.  And in the case of The Sims, there is almost double of everything--one set in My Docs and the other on C: (not literally, but almost).

Putting game saves in My Documents is part of the ‘Games for Windows®’ certification process. That's why more and more companies are doing it.

Yeah, I figured as much (as a Microsoft game I bought a long time ago was the first to start the trend), but that still doesn't mean that it makes the least bit of sense.

Well, yea, it does -- if you do regular backups of your data, you only have to backup one folder and its sub-folders to get everything, rather than having to dig around in Program Files to find them all.

Also, remember that XP Home shares the same code base as XP Professional, and Pro's security is such that users can be restricted to writing to their My Docs directory only, and no place else.  So Program Files would be locked out to anyone but power users and administrators. And no user can see the contents of any other user's My Docs directory.