Impulse: Archiving and Restoring
Thursday, April 30, 2009 by Island Dog | Discussion: Personal Computing
Impulse is a convenient way to purchase and install both applications and games, but what if you want to archive these for backups or for later use? It is possible to archive and restore your games/applications within Impulse, in which you can then leave them in their default location, or backup to an external drive.
If you are an Object Desktop subscriber, it’s recommended you archive your applications in case your subscription expires, this way you will always have access to your applications.
Lets go through the steps of archiving an item in Impulse.
Archiving
Open Impulse and browse to the My Games, or My Software tabs and find the item you wish to archive. Make note that you must have it downloaded and installed before archiving. Once you have your selection, right-click and select ‘Archive Application’.
Once clicked, the item will proceed to be archived, and the length of time this will take depends on the size of the product chosen.
Once archived, the .impulse file is placed in the following default locations:
Vista - C:\ProgramData\Stardock\Impulse\backup
XP - C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Stardock\Impulse\Backup
The default archive location can be changed by clicking the Orb, selecting Preferences, then Folders.
Now your items are archived, and you can leave them or backup to your preferred choice of backups.
Restoring
You have your stuff archived, so now you need to know how to restore it. Open Impulse and click the Orb, and select ‘restore archive’.
A window will then open with the location of your archives, now just select the one you want to restore, and Impulse will restore it.
It’s a pretty simple and effective way to keep a copy of your apps and games backed up to another source. If you don’t have Impulse already, head over to www.impulsedriven.com and grab a free copy.
Reply #2 Thursday, April 30, 2009 1:42 PM
Will always prefer to "Download and Archive" first, and then install, since that allows compatibility between my desktop with XP and my laptop with Vista. 
Reply #3 Thursday, April 30, 2009 1:48 PM
Thanks for the FYI Island Dog. Seems the user that had their subscription expire brought up some valid points. Glad to see you all are on top of it
Reply #4 Thursday, April 30, 2009 1:53 PM
The Impulse Anywhere archives should be independent of OS and can be installed on either.
Hmm. Good to know.
Reply #5 Thursday, April 30, 2009 2:10 PM
It's also worth noting that if your Impulse username has a space in it, the archives can mysteriously fail to restore.
Reply #6 Thursday, April 30, 2009 4:02 PM
Me too.
Me too? I only use Impulse for installs/updates and there's no obvious username in the UI. I'm guessing it's the same as my forum sign-in and seriously hoping any bugs with archive restores will be worked out before Elemental begins posting beta builds.
Reply #7 Thursday, April 30, 2009 6:07 PM
Indeed good to know. As you said the archives should be OS independent, but do you know a way to make them independent?
Reply #8 Friday, May 1, 2009 1:05 AM
Reply #9 Friday, May 1, 2009 7:57 AM
When you download and install something, it's installing for that particular OS, thus the archive will be for that OS.
Reply #10 Friday, May 1, 2009 8:10 AM
Is it possible to tell impulse where I want the archived game to restore? Last time I restored from archive, it went into the program files directory, which is not something I want.
Reply #12 Friday, May 1, 2009 9:00 AM
Nice Tips ID
He already said....
Reply #13 Friday, May 1, 2009 1:09 PM
Is it possible to tell impulse where I want the archived game to restore?
He already said....
The default archive location can be changed by clicking the Orb, selecting Preferences, then Folders.
Edit: nevermind, I found what I was looking for
Reply #14 Friday, May 1, 2009 1:36 PM
Because archives require authentication in order to restore (as in providing no protection in case Stardock goes out of business), is the point of an archive mainly to provide a way to restore to a specific version?
Reply #15 Friday, May 1, 2009 1:43 PM
Not Anywhere archives. No internet/authentication required to install from those, so as long as you've got them backed up it won't matter if Stardock goes out of business.
That said, keeping archives for specific versions is one use, but also to just have a physical backup to save from re-downloading. Object Desktop, mentioned in the OP, is a yearly subscription product so if the subscription expires you won't be able to download the new versions of the software in the suite, and using archives would be the only way to make sure you can get them back if you reformat, upgrade the PC, etc.
Reply #16 Wednesday, May 6, 2009 10:46 AM
Actually they do require internet/authentication. Here is the process as I understand it:
- Download archive for the game you want to install.
- Download a copy of Impulse if you don't already have it.
- Transfer these to the system you want to install them on.
- Install Impulse.
- Install the game.
- Now you have to Unlock your installation. Head to http://anywhere.impulsedriven.com/unlock.aspx to enter the activation code generated by the installation.
- You've given an unlock code. Enter that.
- Now you have to activate the product. Head to http://anywhere.impulsedriven.com/activation.aspx and browse for the activation request file (Product Activation Request.dat is an example).
I haven't been able to complete this process as the files I downloaded never would install properly, so I don't know how that will work out in practice, but those are the steps as shown on http://anywhere.impulsedriven.com/
So in short, I'm unaware of a way to make a real backup of a game purchased through Impulse. 
Reply #17 Wednesday, May 6, 2009 1:19 PM
It turns out that's basically how it works, except only a little different.
- Login to http://anywhere.impulsedriven.com/
- Download all the pieces to your game.
- Transfer to the offline PC.
- Start the installer. It will present you with a menu that gives you three steps (with links).
The rest of the steps are shown in the image.
Reply #18 Thursday, May 7, 2009 10:40 PM
I have the "Archive Applications before updating" option ticked, but Impulse is not auto archiving my apps, at all... I have to do this manually after they are installed, which defeats the idea of OS independent backups.
A fix/workaround for this would be great, if anyone knows how to.
TIA, starkers.
Reply #19 Thursday, September 30, 2010 8:27 PM
September 2010 and still having archive install bugs. Hit restore and then says install were etc ,then closes up says complete and then starts download Jesus Christ just give us a .exe archive of the game it would save them bandwidth and us the hassle of slowly growing to hate impulse
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Reply #1 Thursday, April 30, 2009 1:36 PM
It's worth noting that the archives created this way are specific to the OS on which they were created. So, if you made an archive on Vista, you can't install from it on XP, and vice versa.
The Impulse Anywhere archives should be independent of OS and can be installed on either.