Steam game folder and new OS

Old Man · 14 Feb 2013 at 09:31

Once Win7 64bit is running (upped from Win XP Pro), can I just install the games again or am I looking at Dling them again too?

Armageus · 14 Feb 2013 at 09:34

Old Man said:
Once Win7 64bit is running (upped from Win XP Pro), can I just install the games again or am I looking at Dling them again too?

Assuming you have a backup of your steam folder, then what I would do is:

1. Install Steam - Clean Install
2. Shutdown Steam before it really starts downloading anything
3. Copy Old Steam Folder into the newly created Steam Folder
4. Restart Steam - should show all games as downloaded but may Check them for errors.
5. Profit?

Old Man · 14 Feb 2013 at 09:41

Armageus said:
Assuming you have a backup of your steam folder, then what I would do is:

1. Install Steam - Clean Install
2. Shutdown Steam before it really starts downloading anything
3. Copy Old Steam Folder into the newly created Steam Folder
4. Restart Steam - should show all games as downloaded but may Check them for errors.
5. Profit?

All OS' were on different hd's and Steam has its own hd, so all should be ok I guess. I'll be getting my new SSD on next Tuesday and plan to get everything done then.

TY

WiZZyWiGG · 14 Feb 2013 at 09:41

Yep as easy as that.

One of the many nice features of Steam, a lovely robust client!

Spudgun · 14 Feb 2013 at 09:47

No need for any of that, all my steam games and the steam app are in 1 folder, so if yours are too then you can just run steam from the exe in that folder and everything will work fine

Old Man · 14 Feb 2013 at 09:55

Spudgun said:
No need for any of that, all my steam games and the steam app are in 1 folder, so if yours are too then you can just run steam from the exe in that folder and everything will work fine

OK good to know.

New OS going on the SSD, but will have a dual boot with Linux.

TY

Armageus · 14 Feb 2013 at 10:25

Spudgun said:
No need for any of that, all my steam games and the steam app are in 1 folder, so if yours are too then you can just run steam from the exe in that folder and everything will work fine

In theory that works fine, but in the past I have had some issues with the Steam Service not running correctly. Reinstalling the Client fixes this + ensures all registry settings etc are correct.

Reinstalling the client to the same location (e.g. the folder on the 2nd drive where Steam was installed) would also have same effect, as it will not remove already downloaded game files.