Grrr - how to reinstall Steam - unusual situation!

TheBigCheese · 30 Jun 2011 at 12:08

Hi guys

My SSD boot drive died yesterday so I'm currently in the process of resetting everything up (bit of a nightmare).

I need to reinstall Steam and all my games (and hopefully most of the savegames) are on drive E.

How do I install Steam and tell it to look at the games that are already there?

I can't remember exactly how it was setup...I think the Steam software was installed on C with all my other programs but the games were saved in the games directory on E but I can't be certain.

I still have full access to the E drive and the games folder thankfully, I just need to reinstall Steam and say to it "look here" *points at E*

I can't seem to find the information online as not many people suddenly lose access to their Steam install.

Thanks!

Schizo · 30 Jun 2011 at 12:17

my steam folder is on another drive now due to moving to windows 7.

all i done was copied over all my games and the steam exe file.

once all copied over i just double clicked on the steam exe file and it installed itself on my other hard drive.

all game saves were still there as well.

TheBigCheese · 30 Jun 2011 at 14:04

Thanks for the reply.

I haven't had the opportunity to copy anything over though, the SSD with Steam install data on it is dead, I can't get anything back so it's a fresh install of Steam and this random collection of games installed on a different drive.

Hang on a minute...looking at the E drive there is a Steam folder on there which includes the steamapps folder with the games in..that comes to a whopping 450GB :eek:

but if I count up all the other files in that folder there are 544MB of files which aren't games...

I wonder, could my whole Steam install (except for games that are saved in my games on C) be on E? If so would it just be a case of doing what schizo did?

KIA · 30 Jun 2011 at 20:15

TheBigCheese said:
Thanks for the reply.
I wonder, could my whole Steam install (except for games that are saved in my games on C) be on E? If so would it just be a case of doing what schizo did?

Yes.

Mockingbird · 1 Jul 2011 at 13:56

Install steam, run it once then quit.

Now copy the old, massive Steamapps folder over the new one, delete your clientregistry.blob and run Steam again. That should get you all your installs back, and most of your saves (some will be in your Documents folders).

Aod · 1 Jul 2011 at 14:05

or just install steam to the directory that houses all your games (assuming the original directory structure is all there) it should detect all the games soon enough.