reinstall - how to get all my steam apps to work

hello all

i have wiped my computer to install my bought windows 7 over the beta

i copied the steam apps folder and put it on my E drive and then installed the new windows, now i was under the impression if i installed steam and then dragged the files back over i woud have all my games installed.

no luck yet? what am i doing wrong :[

I did this just the other day also.

Copy the steam apps folder to backup location
Format, reinstall windows and steam.
Run steam once, then completely exit it
Copy over the steam apps folder and merge the files.
Now open steam again and right click the game and select "resume updating" which should take it to "100%" and ready to launch..

whooop it worked taa matey! didn't want to reinstall all them again!

You know you can backup all your steam games? Then you can just reinstall everything in one simple step and no downloading.

Originally Posted by GFiSH

You know you can backup all your steam games? Then you can just reinstall everything in one simple step and no downloading.

Doesn't that take up even more disk space though? As I understand it, it just copies all your Steam games on your hard drive so that if you get rid of Steam or something then they're still there.

No idea, never looked into it. Disk space isn't an issue for me though.

Yah i do this all the time because my raptor drives fill up, so i am always moving apps in steam around from storage to my playing drives. BTW, sometime you will see the game is uninstalled, just click to install it and even though it says downloading, it is really just verifying the files you copied over. the downloading will be real quick unless it also needs to patch that game.

oddly on a slightly different note - i have a second larger internal HD drive and i ideally wanted to have my games on that drive, but when i install anything onto it, and then create a shortcut onto my desktop ( on the other drive ) it doesn't run, do i have to do something to get this to work ( sure i have done this before, but all of a sudden nothing works like that )

thanks

Originally Posted by lordgeordie

oddly on a slightly different note - i have a second larger internal HD drive and i ideally wanted to have my games on that drive, but when i install anything onto it, and then create a shortcut onto my desktop ( on the other drive ) it doesn't run, do i have to do something to get this to work ( sure i have done this before, but all of a sudden nothing works like that )

thanks

Are you refrring to steam again or just generally installing a game on a different drive?

If steam you can use something called "symlinks" to install the game on a different drive, you cannot simply cut and paste the folder to another drive and create a new shortcut. Full guide here

Originally Posted by 1mm3

Are you refrring to steam again or just generally installing a game on a different drive?

If steam you can use something called "symlinks" to install the game on a different drive, you cannot simply cut and paste the folder to another drive and create a new shortcut. Full guide here

i didnt even know you could do that! nice one imm3! virtual +rep mate, non-virtual +beer at i40