March 14, 2010
Q.
I have installed Windows 7 on two computers.
On one I have several games but on the
other, no games are available. How can I
copy them from one computer to the other?
A.
Copying the Windows 7 games is not something
that is that easy to do, and really not
necessary in your case. I suspect that you
have installed Windows Home Premium on one
computer and Windows 7 Professional on the
other. In the home versions, the games are
installed and turned on by default while on
the professional versions, the games are
actually installed but just not turned on.
I would
imagine that the assumption made by
Microsoft is that the Professional version
is for work and not play since no one would
ever play games on the company's time now,
would they?
Also, the
Games option may not be displayed in the
Start menu on the professional version while
it is on the home versions. To display the
Games item on the Start Menu, right click
the taskbar, and choose Properties, click
the Start Menu tab, and then the Customize
button. Scroll down to the heading Games
where you will find three choices. These are
Display as menu, Display as a link, and
Don't display.
If you
choose to display as a link, it will open
the games folder. (See below). If you choose
to display as a menu you get something like
this providing the games are "turned on":
Now to
turn the games on, open the Control Panel,
(click the Start Orb and then Control Panel)
and select Programs and Features. On the
left side click "Turn Windows features on or
off". There may be a wait until all the
items are displayed. The top one will
probably be Games. If not, scroll down until
you find it. Clicking the box in front of it
will select all the games or you can click
the + and then select which games you want
to turn on. Click OK, and the games you
selected will be turned on. This could take
a little time to do.
Now, if
you go back to the Start Menu and click on
the Games items and have Display as a menu
selected, you will get a display similar to
that above. If you have chosen to Display as
a link, then the Games folder will open with
all the games displayed similar to this:
Clicking
on an icon starts the game associated with
it.
Return to
