I have a boxed copy of Spore, as well as the part pack on Origin. For whatever reason when I try to install Spore it doesn't install the files to my drive. The installer completes its processes with no errors but when I try to run the game it doesn't start and Origin doesn't find the files on my C drive, because they don't exist. This is really confusing because I had the game installed not even a year ago and it worked fine.
Possible that the files were corrupted by a windows update.
The best way is to uninstall Spore and use your own windows tool "Disk Clean up".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_Cleanup
If it complicated for you, use the tool CCleaner.
https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner
Important: You must to delete all old files, otherwise the game will revert to any files that are present.
After the whole process restart the computer
Cheers
Liz
Unfortunately, this didn't change anything. There's still no files for Spore on my drive after reinstalling and searching for the game, but it's still taking space.
I think that the installer is marking data as used but not actually writing anything there, which would explain why I can't search for the .exe and Origin doesn't detect it when I try to install the expansion packs.
