Multiple Railworks installs - How are you doing it ?

[CaptScarlet]

Maybe this is a dumb question that I should know the answer too but I have seen mention of having more than one steam / railworks install ( micro or full ) on the same pc and I was wondering how users who have done this are doing it ? Is it just a matter of swapping out steamapps folders or is there a better way ?

Hoping to be educated

John

[dipper6]

Yes John, I'd also like to know so that i can have 2 installs, or even possibly 3 of RW.
These would be for the big routes and another for testing.

For MSTS all you need do is copy it to another location but that wont work for RW because it requires registry entries pointing to it.
Alll I can come up with is that I have a hard drive caddy where I can swap drives in 6 seconds, then I install
Windows 7 in it and in another partition RW.

I'm wondering if installing RW in another partition in my present RW hard Drive would work.
I guess that Steam may install it on another partition as the drive letters will be different, I don't know on this one and its possible for the existing install to fail to work if the RW location is changed in the registry entries.

[chrisreb]

I have 6 installs.

I took a copy of the base RW and use this to copy as a base of a new install.

All I do is to create a copy of the RW install and rename it e.g. Railworks N Lights or RW Wales and Borders etc.

To run I just double the click the exe as usual. Note only the original RW will link to steam.

To update the base install copy accross any updated files from your base install. Also I copy accross assets from my main install as required. This approach has allowed me to run a number of routes that will not work at all with my main install e.g. W&Borders, CSX, Denmark, Northern Lights, West Somerset, Newcastle to York Modern etc.

Apart from storage and backup space this works for me.

[CaptScarlet]

I have 6 installs.

I took a copy of the base RW and use this to copy as a base of a new install.

All I do is to create a copy of the RW install and rename it e.g. Railworks N Lights or RW Wales and Borders etc.

To run I just double the click the exe as usual. Note only the original RW will link to steam.

To update the base install copy accross any updated files from your base install. Also I copy accross assets from my main install as required. This approach has allowed me to run a number of routes that will not work at all with my main install e.g. W&Borders, CSX, Denmark, Northern Lights, West Somerset, Newcastle to York Modern etc.

Apart from storage and backup space this works for me.

Sorry to be dumb about this but when you say "All I do is to create a copy of the RW install and rename it e.g. Railworks N Lights or RW Wales and Borders etc. and "To run I just double the click the exe as usual. Note only the original RW will link to steam." this has me confused because if I try double clicking on the railworks.exe in a backup folder for instance it tells me to log in to steam first.

What is it I am missing ?

John

[august1929]

Now this is interesting, because to get mine to work I have had to copy all of Steam (only putting in the Assets and Routes I require into Railworks within Steamapps). I have not been able to get another copy of Railworks to work within the main instalation or outside Steam itself. I get the "Log in" message, but to get round that I copy the original Railworks shortcut and direct it to the mini (and rename it).

How are people getting RW to work outside of Steam, or even within the same Steamapps?

Rod

[dipper6]

John,
I think this is what he means.

Copy your install of Steam / RW to another partition.
To get it to run go into the new location of Steam and there you will see a file Steam.exe
try using that to see if it works.

If not try this, it may or may not work, Go into Steam, then click on
SteamApps\common\railworks and try RailWorks.exe to see if that works.

If any of those works them when you update Steam copy the updated files across, I doubt its a good idea to copy over the assets and the content folders because you'll get all the files from any routes you install in the new "setup" and that could maybe cause a problem or 2 as some users of W&B route say that W&B works on a "clean" RW install.

I'll be trying that but not untill tomorrow and if I get there before you do I'll make a post here.

[mikesimpson]

On a 'More than one way to skin a cat' method - I have 2 PCs here, and one of them is also dual-bootable into both Windows 7 - 32 bit and Windows 7 64 bit, so in fact this really counts as 3 PCs.

I installed Steam on all 3 computers and activated RailWorks on all 3 (thus having to sit through 3 full downloads ). Thus giving me 3 full copies on 3 different operating systems with each copy being kept up to date by Steam whenever I open Steam on that PC. This works fine, the only proviso being that you can only log on to Steam on one PC at a time.

Mike

[lomasra]

I found the following article very helpful. https://support.steampowered.com/kb_art ... -TDLC-0426

I have several installations of railworks on the same computer (mostly backups that I can return to if I want). The trick for me has been to make sure that only one installation at a time has a copy of the steam.exe file in it and a subfolder with the name steamapps. On the other installations I simply delete the Steam.exe file and rename the steamapps folder to something like xsteamapps. If you don't rename this folder Steam can find it and use it instead of the one you want it to use. I also disable automatic startup of Steam when turning on the PC otherwise Steam can try and reinstall itself where it thinks it should be.

So to make a new installation and run it I do the following :
1. Disable automatic startup of steam.
2. Exit Steam (right click the steam icon in the right hand corner of the windows task bar).
3. Copy the Steam folder complete with all subfolders to a new location.
4. Delete the steam.exe file from the previously active installation and rename the steamapps folder to something else, e.g. xsteamapps.
5. Doubleclick the steam.exe file in the new installation and after a very short Steam update, Railworks should be ready to use.

To reactivate the original installation I just move the steam.exe file back to the original steam folder, delete the other steam files in that folder except for the xsteamapps folder, rename the xsteamapps folder back to steamapps and rename the previously active steamapps to xsteamapps.

Note If I have bought new addons from Steam since the last run of an installation then they will automatically be installed at ths time. I've not tried this procedure with automatic updating turned off so don't know if it would still work.

[chrisreb]

That's funny as I had to do none of that. I have just created a new Railworks xxx named folder and used the exe within that. I had assumed that as the folder was not named just Railworks that was stopping it trying to log into Steam.

I am successfully using additional Railworks installations both inside the original Steam Apps folder and also in a copy - Steamapps folder without any special set up.

My steps have been:

1. take a copy of base install
2. Rename folder
3. copy accross any required assets and install routes
4. Double click exe within new folder and away I go.

RW-Tools is usable with any of my installs just by changing the path as required for the Railworks install I want to work with.


Only my main install ever tries to start up steam.

[august1929]

That's funny as I had to do none of that. I have just created a new Railworks xxx named folder and used the exe within that. I had assumed that as the folder was not named just Railworks that was stopping it trying to log into Steam.

That is what I assumed some were doing - just won't work at all that way for me

Rod

[lomasra]

Only my main install ever tries to start up steam.

Just been having another play with this. I created a copy of the Railworks folder and renamed it as per Chrisreb's suggestion. I then double-clicked the railworks.exe file in the new folder and got the message 'Please log in to Steam'. Decided to log into Steam and try again. I could then run the copy installation no problem. Next tried doing the same with one of my old backups which does not have a renamed railworks folder and that worked as well.

Something has definitely improved since I last tried this some months back. It seems that once you've logged into Steam you can now run any of your backed up or special railworks installations and Steam does not try and update them, probably because when you log in it checks your main railworks installation and then ignores any other copies you might have kicking around. Good News.

[CaptScarlet]

I just tried this as well and it worked but strangely ( and probably why I thought it didn't ) if you are already logged into steam and try it, it will ask you to log in. If you log out of steam and then try it and it asks you to log in and then you log in, it does work.

John

[chrisreb]

At least we are making progress. Without multiple installs the best freeware routes and Newcastle to York modern would not be available to me. Glad you are getting there.