Steam Uninstall Reinstall Help

hey everyone, so I just reinstalled steam after I uninstalled it but now it is making me reinstall ALL of my games. Before I uninstalled, I took the entire SteamApps folder out to a different location and after I put it back into the Steam folder in the new steamapps I cannot get my games back. Do I need to delete the new steamapps folder and put the old one back in or what? This is really bothering me because half of the games on my system are on Steam and now I have to reinstall them. I thought that after I put the old SteamApps folder in all I would have to do is just repair it from steampowered.com but that didn't work either. Could any of you help me?

When I copy Steam games between my computers, I just copy the game folder to the target machine, and click 'install' from within Steam. The games do take maybe half a minute to install, I assume it's just verifying the files.

Is it doing that, or actually redownloading everything?

I don't understand, what exactly do you do?

i recently did this the other day. all i did was backup my steamapps directory. i installed steam then shut steam down. next i deleted the steamapps folder that steam created and copied my previous steamapps folder into the steam directory. i started steam up and it recognized all of my games.

sTrYk3r62796 said:

I don't understand, what exactly do you do?

Click to expand...

If you copy over the "steamapps" folder from your old install, you don't need to download the games again. All you have to do is install Steam on the new computer and place that steamapps folder inside the Steam folder (usually in Program Files). When you run steam, click on a game and either hit "Play" or "Install". Since the game is already local, it sees the files you copied and simply runs the game.

This is why I keep a backup of my Steam folder on my server. It is already 137.8 GB in size.

Yup, I setup a new computer for my brother and was able to get his steam ames moved no problem.

mbentley said:

i recently did this the other day. all i did was backup my steamapps directory. i installed steam then shut steam down. next i deleted the steamapps folder that steam created and copied my previous steamapps folder into the steam directory. i started steam up and it recognized all of my games.

Click to expand...

That worked but now my icons are the default ones that look like a blank page with little squares on it and i can't get the game's icon on there even if I go to Steam then click on the game and create a desktop icon. Di dyou have this problem?

i was able to create a desktop shortcut just fine through steam and the icon appeared just fine for me on multiple games

Did you delete the old ones first? When I right click on the icons and go to properties, the icons has the actual picture icon but when I go to dektop, the icons appear as the paper with little boxes. Weird.

I got it all figured out.
Go to Your local disk>Program Files(x86)>Steam>steam>games>right-click on an icon>properties>Previous Versions>Restore to Previous(which will probably be a week or earlier this year)>click on it>Copy>then re-navigate to steam games>copy>select copy but keep both files. Do this for all of them and they will all owrk again! Please Note;You CANNOT select keep file but delete old as this will not work with it.

I hope someone else sees this and it helps them, as it helped me.