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I have Baldur's Gate 2 installed...but it's not installed. What?

All right, so I beat Baldur's Gate 2 last night, and after digging through my office room, I was able to find the Throne of Bhaal CD. However, upon popping it into my computer, it says that Baldur's Gate 2 is not installed and it won't run.

Funny thing is, I've always had a weird little trick happening with Baldur's Gate 2. I had it installed on my computer years ago (Windows 7), but for some reason I can't remember, the shortcut for the game always had its play button replaced with the install button, as if to suggest it was never installed.

However... I have the game installed. I can see all of the program files, and I can manipulate them however I see fit. The reason why I was able to play it all this time was because of a different shortcut used inside the program files, called "BGMain." It skipped the start-up screen altogether and just went into the game. I was able to play from there with no problems.

But now with Throne of Bhaal freaking out... What the heck? Sure, the shortcut for BG2 is faulty, but can't it see that I still have the game on my computer? I don't understand what's going on here.

I'd really rather not risk uninstalling the game and reinstalling it... I've backed up my save data on my external hard drive, but it's still tricky, and I'd hate to lose my file after all the work I did. Is there anything I can do to make Throne of Bhaal recognize BG2? Or...did something horribly wrong happen years ago in the original installation and I have to reinstall it?

Comments

  • BuurmanSvenBuurmanSven Member Posts: 5
    It seems like the registry keys for the BG2 installation are missing or corrupted, which is why ToB and the BG2 launcher both think BG2 is not installed. Unless you can find a way to reproduce the missing keys I don't think there's anything you can do about this except reinstalling, unfortunately.

    A fresh install of BG2 should be able to launch your saves but there's always the possibility of mishaps, especially if you have installed mods.

    Two things you could try (with no guarantees whatsoever unfotunately ;-)) :

    - Make a fresh BG2 install in a different folder on your filesystem, try to locate the registry keys in the registry editor (search for 'baldur' or 'BG' I'd guess) and try to make any keys that point to a certain location on your filesystem point to your 'old' installation.

    - Make a fresh BG2 install as above, install ToB in the same location, copy everything from the new installation to the 'old' location, copy your savegames back to the 'old' location. You might want to back up the entire 'old' BG2 folder beforehand and this won't fix any registry keys (they will point to the new location) so you still need to use bgmain.exe to start the game.
  • bbearbbear Member Posts: 1,180
    I suspect you are not installing the ToB in the same directory as BG2 SoA. Try to locate the BG2 path directory when you do the installation of ToB.
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