Reinstalling Steam

Stevev · 31 Mar 2008 at 18:46

I Need to do a clean install so i'm having to reinstall steam. I was just wondering how.. Do i delete the games from within steam or do i just delete the folders from windows ?

DaveyD · 31 Mar 2008 at 19:05

Are you wiping the HDD completely or what?

If you're formatting, you'll want to back up your game files if you don't want to re-download them all. All the files are .gcf in the \steam\SteamApps\ folder. Any other files like Savegames will depend upon the game, but will likely be in the Steam\SteamApps\user\ folder.

-iceblade^ · 31 Mar 2008 at 19:05

AFAIK, and i am not a heavy steam user yet, you just go into steam, and just say remove local content for each one.

and then redownload them when you reinstall

daveyD is right though, it might be worth backing em up first

Stevev · 31 Mar 2008 at 19:12

Not wiping the HDD, but i will backup the saves. I've just been having some serious game crashes & freezes, so gonna do a complete reinstall to see if it fixes the problem

-iceblade^ · 31 Mar 2008 at 19:25

gfx drivers update? might be one cause...

having to reinstall Windows is so bleh... seeing all those screens promising you glory when it's all a bunch of rubbish

Tombo · 31 Mar 2008 at 19:31

Verify and defrag the cache, if that doesn't fix it then re downloading it won't do anything.

PinkPig · 31 Mar 2008 at 20:33

You won't fix any problems by completely removing and reinstalling Steam, it's just a lot of hard work!

Skeeter · 31 Mar 2008 at 23:28

Agreed, Reinstalling Steam wont fix your problem.

For reference, the games are stored in the SteamApps folder, just delete this and restart steam.