Moving Steam to a New Install

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I'm sure there is a thread on this, but I couldn't find anything recent with the search.

Basically I've reinstalled Windows 7 x64 on a different drive, before I disconnected the old drive I copied the whole Steam program files folder to a networked backup drive in the hope I could just install Steam, copy the folder over the one it created and it would run. No need to redownload the games or lose my saves.

Unfortunately I'm getting an error message;

steamerror.jpg


I'm guessing it has something to do with the permissions. I've tried various permission based changes, but the same error message comes up. Not quite sure what is going on as it is the same version of Windows with the same username etc.

Has anyone done this sucessfully? I'd rather not redownload 25GB odd of games if I can avoid it.

Thanks,

Mark
 
Hmmmm, I'm unsure exactly what's gone on here as a straight copy should have been fine, even on Windows 7.

I would suggest you need to take ownership of the folder and ensure that everyone has permissions to it afterwards.

You 'could' also try installing Steam over the top of the directory however it's possible that while this would allow the application to launch it may not see any of your existing cache files, so you would still need to try and sort the permissions on them.
 
Bingo, got it sorted. Basically like you said I needed to take ownership.

I gave full control to "Users (Mark-PC\Users)" and that did the trick, I tried most of the others and the permissions matched up with the old installation. But there wasn't "Users (Mark-PC\Users)" in the list but something similar "Mark (Mark-PC\Mark)".

I'm not 100% it is sorted yet, have to test each game but it is at least running.
 
Excellent :). You should be golden now to be honest.

Only thing I will say is, I hope you haven't presumed that all your Steam games store their respective saves within the Steam directory... cause they don't lol.

Good it's working though :).
 
Yeah I always make sure to backup the documents folder amoung others, most are there and I only had a few games installed since my last W7 install.

Anyways thanks for the help!
 
i'd never bother putting steam on your windows drive. put it on another drive (or partition if you only have one drive) and you'll never have to worry about copy/pasting/moving again. steam doesn't even need installing on a new windows build. just run steam.exe from inside the steam folder and it sets itself up.

i do the same for all my games and data/music/videos/etc. absolutely nothing of value is on my windows drive. it saves so much time when you re-install.
 
Yeah if I wasn't running SSDs then I'd do that, but you lose the benifit.

I do however have pictures and music on a networked drive in a server, which is on 24/7.
 
I've been running steam from my NAS for a few months now and isn't anywhere near as slow as I was expecting it to be. Pleasantly surprised and keeping it like that I think. :)
 
knowledge123 said:
Glad to hear you go tit working, I have my Steam folder on an external drive.

Pro tip: Use Teracopy for super quick transfers. It did 80 gigs for me in 2 hours, to a USB HDD.
Click to expand...

Yeah good idea, although transfers over my Gigabit network are pretty quick just through standard transfers.


Terrier_Jimlad said:
In future, just copy the SteamApps folder to a backup, install Steam on new rig, copy folder back = winner
Click to expand...

Good to know. So you don't lose anything doing it that way?

I did try that after I had that error, but the same issue came up.


wolvers69 said:
I've been running steam from my NAS for a few months now and isn't anywhere near as slow as I was expecting it to be. Pleasantly surprised and keeping it like that I think. :)
Click to expand...

I guess if I had a bigger Steam game collection that might be required, but hopefully should be ok.
 
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