Hello everybody
This is my first blog. This wont really fit as a blog but it can't be a doc , so its a blog.
One of the new features that is present in windows vista is the games explorer. It can be accessed from the start menu as start -> games. This place contains all the games installed in a system for quick access. More than that , it keeps game info, game ratings ,tracks recently played games and requirements needed to run the game based on the vista experience index scale. Here is what my games explorer looks like.



You will notice that the right hand side (preview pane) shows the various game ratings and the details pane at the bottom shows other game info. Make sure you have both details pane and preview pane turned ON from settings in organize ->layout in the games explorer. These changes made here wont effect the settings in normal explorer .

Lets have a look what all things can be customized here.
1)Disabling specific pre-installed games : Vista comes pre-loaded with 9 games and there is another one (hold em poker) for the vista ultimate users which comes as a part of the ultimate extras update. Any of these can be enabled/disabled easily . For that go to control panel ->programs and features . On the tasks pane on the left side click turn windows features on or off. Here you can select what games to keep . You can re-enable any game if you want to do so in future.

2)Updating game info and rating : Vista automatically updates the game information and rating . It can be turned on/off by clicking options on top of the games explorer. It is recommended that you keep it enabled. As far as the visual rating of the game is concerned , vista rates in from info from the web. You can change which rating system it uses. Go to control panel -> parental control . On the task pane on left click select a games rating system and you will see a window as shown below. Select the website of your choice.

3)Manually adding games, box art and game info to the games explorer : Although all the games installed are added here automatically, some older ones fail to come up here. Some may appear here but without boxart and other info. This is particularly the case with older games , and not fully compatible games. Some other include those from not so big publishers. An easy way to add such games to the games explorer is to just drag and drop the game executable here. But that will display a very small icon in the game explorer and without any other info (boxart).
Here's a way to make such games appear like others :

• Vista updates games information from allgames.com . So search the site for the related games information and boxart or any other place that you want to. Convert the boxart to preferably .jpg format .
• Next go to regedit. Start ->run , type regedit. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\GameUX . Here you will see a default games key and other keys depending on the number of user accounts on the pc. My screen shows one additional key as there is only one user account enabled. Under this key (boxed one in screen below),there are 3 additional keys(grouped in screen below) for the 3 additional games currently present in the games explorer in my case.

• Select any one of these. Now edit the string registry keys (those with type REG_SZ) and add the game information with appropriate data. Don't worry about the current game , it will be automatically created in games explorer the next time it is started. Plz do make a backup of registry before editing.

Here is what all needs to be changed starting from the top key : appexepath - add the game executable path , boxart - path to the downloaded .jpg file , configapplication path - path to folder which contains the game executable , description , developer name, developer url , genre,publisher name ,publisher url, release country, release date,title can be easily changed , Also set WMgameid to blank.

• Next enable hidden folders and navigate to C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\GameExplorer .Here the boxarts of additional games are stored. Carefully select the boxart of the game which you have edited in registry and copy its file name. Next go and rename the downloaded box art file with this key and copy that renamed file to this folder. It will ask for a replace . Allow it . Now you can delete the downloaded boxart file from the other location.

• Here's the last step. Copy the path of this boxart file into the boxart REG_SZ key in the registry editor. After this it will be done. The game whose keys have been edited will automatically make another key for itself when you start it next time.

See, I added one of my old games to the games explorer. Here is how it looks now.


The new game added is pocket tanks , one nice game from a small publisher that failed to come up in the games explorer, but now its there. I used the nfs underground 2 reg-keys for this one and the underground 2 icon came back when i started it again after all this. So basically this method uses the keys of games that come up automatically in the games explorer. I have added some screens to make it more understandable.

So just go and play around with the vista games explorer . Any comments or queries are welcomed.

Thanx