Games in accessories

I am not a hardcore gamer hence don’t like to install any third party or high end games releasing these days. I was happy with the default games we get with our XP operating system like solitaire, minesweeper, spider and free cell. Yesterday by mistake or don’t know when I deleted all these games from my system.

Now the problem is I need them back but I don’t know how. I also don’t have my Windows XP installation CD so that I can format or repair my system so that I can get them again. I tried going in Add and Remove Components and clicked Accessories but it says cannot copy files. Can you guys help me getting my XP default games back ?

I don’t think you need to worry about that and as far as I know you don’t need to format or repair your system for getting those games back. Because as per my knowledge the ones you deleted are just Shortcut of the games like we have shortcuts on our desktop for all installed apps and games. They are actually located somewhere else on your system.

So, if you are not able to locate the original directory of the game (even I don’t know where it is located), than better you can create new shortcuts for the same and all those games will be accessible again. If you want to do the same, here are shortcuts you need to make:

Quote:

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"%SystemRoot%\System32\FreeCell.exe"
"%SystemRoot%\System32\msHearts.exe"
"%SystemRoot%\System32\Sol.exe"
"%SystemRoot%\System32\Spider.exe"
"%SystemRoot%\System32\WinMine.exe"
"%ProgramFiles%\Windows NT\Pinball\Pinball.exe"
"%ProgramFiles%\msN Gaming Zone\Windows\BckgZm.exe"
"%ProgramFiles%\msN Gaming Zone\Windows\ChkrZm.exe"
"%ProgramFiles%\msN Gaming Zone\Windows\HrtzZm.exe"
"%ProgramFiles%\msN Gaming Zone\Windows\RvseZm.exe"
"%ProgramFiles%\msN Gaming Zone\Windows\ShvlZm.exe"

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Thanks a lot for helping me friend but what I deleted was not the shortcut. I came to know what I actually did. I was doing disk cleanup and forgot to select accessories check box under more advanced option under component manager. Hence, I guess it deleted my games from original location as well. So the shortcuts codes above are also not working. Any more help?

Well than there are just 2 ways left to get the same according to me.

First is you should try restoring your system to previous point where the games were not deleted.

And second is download XP SP2 ISO from Microsoft and repair.

Thanks for the suggestion Gaurika but restoring the system to a point created 1month ago also dint helped me.

And as per your second suggestion, i completed download the SP2 ISO, now what to do ?

I don’t know what was the need of download SP2. It was enough if you have a normal Windows XP CD as well. Anyways, what you need to do is got to Add/Remove Windows Components and uncheck the games. Click Apply and better reboot your system once. Now again go to the same location and checkbox the games, click Apply OK.

System should restart the installation of games. It will prompt you to insert the Windows XP installation Disk. See if you get option for ‘browse’, if it is there, give it the patch of ISO saved on your hard drive. If you have burned it on Disk will be better, just insert the disk and done.

As far as I know those default games are Windows system files and cannot be deleted so easily. They should be somewhere on your drive, may be hidden as they are system files. In case if we successfully delete any system files from windows, when we reboot our system they actually get replaced again on the next boot up by the system automatically.

For those of you that have accidentally uninstall your windows accessories ie games etc. and when you tried to reinstall and you get a message for each program it's trying to install, run the following text string in the run box. It fixes a corrupt installation database. I got this awhile back and it worked great.

esentutl /p %windir%\security\database\secedit.sdb

trust me this works