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Moving Roms Location


Drybonz

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I have needed to move my roms files location. Obviously, the games are now not found by Launchbox. Is there an easy way to point it to my new roms location? I'm trying to avoid deleting all the games from Launchbox and re-adding them. Thanks for the help.
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Hi @Drybonz, welcome. Unfortunately there's not really a quick and easy way to do that in LaunchBox yet, but what you can do is open up your LaunchBox.xml file in a text editor (something like Notepad++) and do a search and replace in the file to change the paths. Just be sure to make a backup of the file in case you screw something up. This is one reason why it's recommended to keep everything in the LaunchBox folder, because then you don't have to worry about moving stuff around.
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Thanks very much for the reply. Unfortunately, I can't avoid needing to move or re-organize things on my windows system to accommodate this application. Since importing roms is so central to what launchbox does... it seems like it really needs a more flexible way to do this. I've only been using Launchbox for a short time, and I really like the look of having all the box art, etc paired up to my library... but my experience has been that it's more hassle than just opening the roms in individual emulators.
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Changing paths is simple first you open Notepad++ (download it first if you don't already have it and then install it) second open your LaunchBox XML (You should back it up first in case something goes wrong you won't be totally screwed) then you go to search and click on find when in find put in the path as an example originally I had my roms set up on my Windows Home Server so the path was \\WHS2011\Emulators\NES\NES ROMs so type in your path and then click the count button and see how many instances that you find if it looks right then you click the replace tab and a second text box will appear with the first path still showing in my case I wanted to have LaunchBox look in a local directory I had made which was E:\Emulators\Nintendo\NES\Roms then i click replace all and save and then I go back to find type in my new path and click count again to make sure that it made my changes. From my experience when you do the final changes it is important to have LaunchBox closed already then reopen it after checking that your count is now registering under your new path. As to your reference to it being a hassle what do you mean? Once roms are linked it should be as simple as click and go now your emulators may need to be configured properly but that really doesn't have anything to do with LaunchBox. I know from experience that it would be much easier if LB could easily change directories on a whim but since at the present moment it can't this method is pretty simple in making what you want to happen actually happen.
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  • 1 year later...
On 1/5/2016 at 7:50 PM, DOS76 said:

 open your LaunchBox XML (You should back it up first in case something goes wrong you won't be totally screwed)

I can't seem to find the launchbox.xml.  What folder is that located in?  I am running LaunchBox Premium V 7.10 and I installed it to the root of C: so LaunchBox is in C:\LaunchBox but I can't find the xml.

 

When I installed my Roms I have them on a network share and I just got a SSD and want to move them to a local drive for faster performance but I can't find the .xml

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

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Spoiler

 

You could also symbolic link  your roms folder as well, i had to move my whole launchbox setup off the root of my hdd into a subfolder called LaunchBox because launchbox would not self update/install the update if it was on the root of my drive and if i just up n moved my LaunchBox/rocketlauncher setup alot of my directory links would have been broken.... so symbolic links to the rescue....... waiting for the day when it all goes tits up and somethings break lol.... lets hope it doesn't happen.

Edited by Mute64
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  • 1 year later...
On 6/29/2017 at 5:53 AM, Mute64 said:
  Reveal hidden contents

 

You could also symbolic link  your roms folder as well, i had to move my whole launchbox setup off the root of my hdd into a subfolder called LaunchBox because launchbox would not self update/install the update if it was on the root of my drive and if i just up n moved my LaunchBox/rocketlauncher setup alot of my directory links would have been broken.... so symbolic links to the rescue....... waiting for the day when it all goes tits up and somethings break lol.... lets hope it doesn't happen.

This is far far the easiest solution (and maybe safest as don't need to edit XML file manually), we have done this at work when we had to move clickonce install folders which are a pain when lots of people have installed from the old location..

I had to move ps2 as I ran out of space on my SSD and rather than buy a new one I just add a second smaller one and sym linked the folder..

win 10 instructions - https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-take-advantage-of-symbolic-links-in-window-10/

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2 minutes ago, joele said:

This is far far the easiest solution (and maybe safest as don't need to edit XML file manually), we have done this at work when we had to move clickonce install folders which are a pain when lots of people have installed from the old location..

I had to move ps2 as I ran out of space on my SSD and rather than buy a new one I just add a second smaller one and sym linked the folder..

win 10 instructions - https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-take-advantage-of-symbolic-links-in-window-10/

Since this thread was created a change rom folder has been implemented into the UI under the tools menu. Symbolic links work just as well of course though.

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