Cannot Reinstall Steam -- No Location

[Punkin]

I think this is the right place for this. So I had steam installed on a hard drive on this laptop before, but forgot to uninstall pertinent programs before reformatting it. Now my system believes these programs to exist, either on the nonexistent D: drive (which is now named F:) or in the case of steam, it doesn't even list a location for it. Running the steam install program just returns an error about invalid directory D:, and I cannot uninstall it from add/remove programs to remedy it because it says "Not enough disk space". Well of course there isn't enough, it doesn't exist anymore!

I even went so far as to use regedit, following the manual steam uninstall guide. However, Steam still shows in add/remove programs, and has no location, therefor it will not completely be removed. How can I solve this?

Note: This is also true for any programs (i.e. games) I had installed on that drive as well via steam. If I can remove steam, though, I should be able to repeat the process on those programs. Hopefully.

EDIT: And I can't contact steam support because the captcha image verification system just keeps saying I entered it wrong...

[[☥] - CJ -]

Are you sure you did a full reformat, or did you just do a recovery?

If you did a full format then there should not be any record of your previous programs and so forth.

C drive is where programs and windows would be installed to
D drives for laptops are usually where the recovery parition is located.

[Punkin]

Opprinnelig skrevet av ☥ - CJ -:

Are you sure you did a full reformat, or did you just do a recovery?

If you did a full format then there should not be any record of your previous programs and so forth.

C drive is where programs and windows would be installed to
D drives for laptops are usually where the recovery parition is located.

I actually reformatted the D drive into 2 partitions, and made one a linux partition. C drive was never reformatted or anything. It's beginning to look like I need to reformat to solve this, however, which would be really annoying.

[_I_]

if you want to remove the uninstall string use spybot 1.62
http://www.safer-networking.org/mirrors16/

tools -> uninstall info
select steam and delete the entry for steam

[Punkin]

So I downloaded and installed spybot, like you said, but it can't find the Steam uninstall info. But it still shows in add/remove, and there's somehow still references to Steam on the D drive. How bizarre.

Nope, nevermind found it right after I posted that. Still returns Invalid drive: D:\ when I try to reinstall however.

[[☥] - CJ -]

i suppose you could change the drive letter in the uninstall.exe properties?

unno if that would work or be possible tho

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Opprinnelig skrevet av ☥ - CJ -:

i suppose you could change the drive letter in the uninstall.exe properties?

unno if that would work or be possible tho

Yes, just do this.

But in order to do so you need to tell the system it's different location, by looking for Valve > Steam in the Registry Editor and changing the Install/Uninstall lines for Steam Client's location.

If need be, put Steam files in a path that is in the registry, on D drive, by going into Computer > Manage > Disk Management. If D is something else, remove it's drive letter for the time being, then change F drive to D. Then reinstall Steam, then Uninstall it. Once removed, change D back to the F drive that you wanted to be. If D was originally your optical drive, now u can change that one back to D.

What I usually always do with important external drives is when connected for first time, if something is going to ever be installed to it. Change it's drive letter manually to something further down the alphabet. Thus it is very unlikely for that letter to change due to other removable drives being present and taking hold of the first few letters after C or D.

Usually you figure it's like this on most setups...
> C (OS)
> D (Optical)
> E, F, G, H (Card Reader) I like to change these as well, to say M, N, O, P

...so avoid using these for externals.

If you have temp usb flash drives u only use every so often, let those use be the ones to use temp drive letters, such as E, F, G, H.

For external HDD that is going to house game clients, games, etc. I would change that to something after P drive letter. To ensure it doesn't change by plugging in a different drive and having that drive take over the letter for what was your external HDD.

[Punkin]

Okay, I tried changing all the values to F: and got a different error, it said that the address 'Program Files (x86)' has an invalid character.

So I decide I'll switch F: to D: and see if that works. Except, apparently D: is still reserved, which means it thinks it's still connected/actually exists. I'm really confused, especially because it found a completely free, unused harddrive apparently (I thought that was my linux drive, but apparently not!). So now I need to find a way to erase D: from my computer entirely somehow.

[rotNdude]

The manual game uninstall is different.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6004-QSKX-2815

If Windows thinks Steam is still installed, then you haven't got rid of everything in the registry that is related to Steam/Valve.

[Punkin]

Opprinnelig skrevet av rotNdude:

The manual game uninstall is different.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6004-QSKX-2815

If Windows thinks Steam is still installed, then you haven't got rid of everything in the registry that is related to Steam/Valve.

I went to that directory and couldn't find anything related to Steam/Valve. I did the manual uninstall again though, found some more stuff I must've missed. It still shows in add/remove programs, and in the start menu, unfortunately. I must be missing something, but I can't fathom what.