Elemental Forums
The archive for Elemental: War of Magic was not archived for this OS.
This archive can only be restored on the OS it was originally created for.
So is there some way to get around this? It seems like a pretty serious problem, if I archive in Steam I have no trouble transferring between OS.
Some games and apps have files outside their install locations or OS-specific dependencies; that is the reason for the limitation on archives created from existing installs. If you use the Download Archive option on a machine without the game currently installed, it will get the original package that is not OS-specific (These can also be gotten via Impulse Anywhere).
Awesome! Thank you, not completely useless then, I did think it was a bit strange 
Try grabbing the package from here: http://anywhere.impulsedriven.com/
Thinking about it, does this mean that every time a new patch comes out you have to download the entire game again if you want an archive of the latest version for all OS?
Couldn't you just install from the archive and then patch it normally?
From another thread I was reading a while ago, I got the impression that it was actually practical to keep an up-to-date archived version of the game, in case impulse ever became unavailable.
So basically from a future-proofing perspective, archiving isn't completely useless, it is just completely unwieldy because you have to remember to archive before you install, and completely impractical because you have to download the entire game again every time it patches.
At least it is still useful if you format your PC using the same OS...
So I formatted my pc the other day. Before I did I made an archive of Elemental. Now I try to restore it and it appears to work; it runs through all the steps and finally says "Install Complete!". Then it realises it hasn't done anything at all, and the status changes back to "Available". No Elemental. Is there any way to make this thing actually work? 
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