How do you make a backup of save games and patches?

Question

I'm getting a new motherboard which means I have to reinstall my OS, how would I do that but not have to remove my games? Is there anyway I can back up the games?

Specifically, I don't want to lose my save progress in Skyrim or have to download all of the Battlefield patches again.

Answer

The location of the save data was answered here. Back that up to an external device and your save data should be good.

Skyrim puts its saves in the following directory in Windows Vista & Windows 7:

C:\Users\[UserName]\Documents\My Games\Skyrim\Saves

Skyrim puts saves in the following directory in Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings[UserName]\My Documents\My Games\Skyrim\Saves

The BF3 installation data should be done in the same manner. The EA forums have a post regarding this.

• Navigate to your origin games directory.
• Copy the battefield 3 folder to your backup location.
• Install Origin on the new PC.
• Copy the backup back into your Origin games folder.
• Open Notepad and copy paste the bellow text.
• Edit the correct path to the Origin Games folder, eg C:\Program Files\Origin Games\ (Remember to double backslash "\" instead of "\" for the path, in both "GDFBinary" and "Install Dir" fields.
• Save the notepad doc as bf3.reg, select "All Files" under the drop menu "Save as type".
• Run the registry file and add to registry.
• Open Origin, it will say preparing for a while until the process completes checking the files.
• Play game.

Here is the text which works for my setup, my orgin games folder is under C:\Games\Orgin Games. Edit appropriately for your setup. Enjoy.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\EA GAMES\Battlefield 3] "GDFBinary"="C:\games\Origin Games\Battlefield 3\GDFBinary_en_US.dll" "GameExplorer"="{A62587A8-42EC-4F3B-A42D-206690BAE079}" "DisplayName"="Battlefield 3™" "Locale"="en_US" "Product GUID"="{76285C16-411A-488A-BCE3-C83CB933D8CF}" "Install Dir"="C:\games\Origin Games\Battlefield 3\"

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