Everything Still There Even after Win10 Clean Install

[RobS]

I'm a little perplexed.

A couple of days ago, I upgraded from Win7 to Win10, doing a clean install of the latter. As expected, all I saw on the desktop after the install was the Trash Can I think Microsoft Edge.

I had been playing the GoG "Complete" version of Civ III just prior to the upgrade. Also, I had saved my GoG install exe's (two additional games besides Civ III) to a USB drive, along with everything else I wanted to hold on to from my old Win7 setup.

Earlier today, I reinstalled the GoG Civ III game, using the same exe install that I had put on the USB drive and fired up the game. Lo and behold, I see all my old saved games from before the upgrade! It took me right back to the last save of the last game I had been playing!
I am absolutely, positively, 100% sure that I did a clean install of Win10. That was the whole point of first saving 31 MB of stuff that I wanted to keep to a USB drive.
How is this possible if I did a clean install of Win10? Isn't it supposed to erase everything on the hard drive?

Edit: And, just to be clear, I had not saved any aspects of my old games to the USB drive. All it has on it is the install exe that I originally bought from GoG some years ago. I'm not a modder and I had no interest in saving any of my existing saved games or anything else.

 

[Lord_Hill]

Did you install it through GOG Galaxy? Maybe it has cloud saves?

 

[RobS]

Did you install it through GOG Galaxy? Maybe it has cloud saves?

I might have, with my initial install a few years ago, but not with my install a few days ago.
I'll look over my GoG account.

Edit: I suppose it must have something to do with GoG, although when it comes to these kinds of things I usually turn them off because I just want to be able to play games "locally" without being kept track of by some ubiquitous "cloud". I did see something about "Cloud Saves" on GoG, but I'm not sure whether that toggle turns things on, off, or what. I am not at familiar with these types of features dealing with online gaming.

In any case, this is not a game issue, but a Win10 or GoG issue, so I will not waste anyone elses time here with it.

Edit 2: For the sake of completenes, let me add some additional info, in case anyone else has a similar experience.

Civ III is not the only game that was carried over from my Win7 to my clean install of Win10, and none of the other games were associated with my GoG account.

Firstly, there were two additional games I had purchased from GoG, some years ago, which I had installed in my Win7 setup, but unlike Civ III did not appear after my Win10 installation. Those two games are SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition and Master of Orion 2. I had both on Win7 but neither carried over to Win10.

Here are two non-Gog games which I had on Win7 and which also carried over to Win 10:
Windows Steel Panthers Main Battle Tank, bought from Shrapnel Games
Midway, bought from John Tiller Software

Here are the games that did not carry over from Win7 to Win10, aside from the two GoG games above:
Railroad Tycoon II Platinum Edition
The Sims 2
A trio of "Combat Mission" games, from Battlefront.com
Two demos from John Tiller Software

There were also several non-game programs that did not carry over, including but probably not limited to:
7-Zip
Audacity
Vassal
Adobe

Finally, during the Win10 install I was surprised that I was never asked for my old Win7 activation code.
So, apparently, my "Clean Install" of Win10 was anything but clean. I have a feeling that the fact that Win10 requires end users to have a Microsoft account probably has something to do with all this. Can't say I'm happy, but there's probably not much I can do about it.