Games explorer incorrectly identifying games (Vista)

GrimReaper

I've noticed in games explorer on Vista it's often misidentifying games or failing to even detect them.

For example;

Here I have installed BF2 and BF2 Special Forces and yet it only picks up BF2. Also, for some really bizarre reason it's detecting Half-Life 2 as Half-Life: Source.

When I launch the selection.. it launches HL2, at this point I had installed HL2 & HL2 Ep1 but I hadn't yet even installed HL:S.




So I decided to install a few more games...



As you can see BF2 SF still isn't there, along with HL2.

Also, it's now picking up Half-Life (original) as Counter-Strike. (when I launch "Counter-Strike" from games explorer like the HL:S selection it actually launches HL 1. I don't even have Counter-Strike installed atm.)

I decided to install Half-Life: Source and see if that did anything... as you can see, it has. I now have two Half-Life: Source selections, one which starts HL2 and one which actually starts HL:S.




Has anyone else had these problems? And is there a way to force it to re-detect/refresh the list?

Zell

There is no way to do that. Most likely if it isn't detected the first time, it's not on the website they use for information. It will sometimes register a game the first time you launch it. You can also drag games manually to the explorer, but it won't get boxart that way. There's no way you can add boxart to a game the Games Explorer doesn't automatically detect.

The Vista Games Explorer is a horrible program and there's nothing you can do about it, but you can just remove the sidebar and change the main interface to medium icons and have a nice self-updating games folder.

Then just manually add missing entries and hide wrong ones.


Edit: Also, Half-Life games don't register themselves, so they're "guessed" based on their exectuables, and the executables for mods are the same as the games themselves. My guess is something's similar going on with Battlefield 2.

Oh, and if you want to use the Games Explorer thing the way it was meant to be used, only buy games that are "Games for Windows".

gneGne

Nice system rating O_O