To Uninstall steam app or not?

[Capt Marvelous]

So the last Windows 10 update has caused problems on my laptop. Uinstalling that patch made things worse as I can no longer receive updates. I decided to reinstall my OS.

I store my OS on my SSD and have a HHD for my media and Origin/ steam games.

If I reinstall my OS, will my steam app and games still work if I leave them and the HHD intact? Or should I uninstall the steam app first and would that also uninstall the games? I already have the game installers backed up and the game files folder are much too large to copy to another drive. I dread to having to spend a hour or more unpacking and installing every game.

[Seven7]

1 www.gamesave-manager.com/ for games, that not support Steam Cloud
2 if have space for backup games - use built-in backup - it's shrink games size on disk x2 and split it to ~1024Mb volumes

[Kenny32673]

If the game installations are on the non-OS drive then no backing up is required.

As long as when you reinstall Steam on the newly installed OS and make sure the library folders are set right then they will work. A small download may be required for some games but only a few MB.

But DO NOT UNINSTALL STEAM as that will automatically uninstall all of your games. Just go to your Steam install folder (assuming it is on the non-OS drive) and manually delete everything EXCEPT the steamapps folder and the steam.exe.

When you reinstall the OS, and are ready to reinstall steam, simply run the Steam.exe and it will be reinstalled, leaving your games intact.

[Capt Marvelous]

Originally posted by MonkeySeeker:

If the game installations are on the non-OS drive then no backing up is required.

As long as when you reinstall Steam on the newly installed OS and make sure the library folders are set right then they will work. A small download may be required for some games but only a few MB.

But DO NOT UNINSTALL STEAM as that will automatically uninstall all of your games. Just go to your Steam install folder (assuming it is on the non-OS drive) and manually delete everything EXCEPT the steamapps folder and the steam.exe.

When you reinstall the OS, and are ready to reinstall steam, simply run the Steam.exe and it will be reinstalled, leaving your games intact.

My steam app is installed on the HHD. Won't running the steam.exe during reinstallion overwrite any existing folders including the steamapps in that directory? Will there be any affect on how Windows on my SSD recognize or detect steam in my HHD?

Can that procedure be applied with Origin? Even though I have only one game installed so it's loss would be a minimum inconvenience.

[Capt Marvelous]

Originally posted by Seven7:

1 www.gamesave-manager.com/ for games, that not support Steam Cloud
2 if have space for backup games - use built-in backup - it's shrink games size on disk x2 and split it to ~1024Mb volumes

All my games are steam cloud supported and I have all of them backed up on a external drive.

Won't deshrinking and recombining be just as time consuming reinstalling them?

[Kenny32673]

Originally posted by Black RX:

My steam app is installed on the HHD. Won't running the steam.exe during reinstallion overwrite any existing folders including the steamapps in that directory? Will there be any affect on how Windows on my SSD recognize or detect steam in my HHD?

Can that procedure be applied with Origin? Even though I have only one game installed so it's loss would be a minimum inconvenience.

No, you will delete everything axcept the steamapps folder and steam.exe anyway so there will be nothing to overwrite (all your Steam settings etc. would be redownloaded from the cloud when you sign in again). The steamapps folder won't be over-written when reinstalling no.

You may lose any screenshots etc. that you haven't uploaded/backed up though but that's about it.

There will be no effect on Windows recognising/detecting Steam either, as it's basically a fresh install of Steam after you've reinstalled Windows but without having to uninstall Steam first (which uninstalls all your games).

As for Origin you can save the game install yes (I'm assuming it's on the HDD also?) but you'll need to re-install Origin - I don't think simply deleting everything except the .exe works for Origin like it does for Steam.

The games are by default installed in a separate folder to Origin itself. And the good news is that uninstalling the Origin client does NOT remove the games.

So you can uninstall Origin before you reinstall Windows then reinstall it afterwards and provided you set the game install location to the same origin games folder as before, when you click install on the game Origin will detect the files (will take a couple of minutes), but won't need to redownload it all.

[Capt Marvelous]

Originally posted by MonkeySeeker:

Originally posted by Black RX:

My steam app is installed on the HHD. Won't running the steam.exe during reinstallion overwrite any existing folders including the steamapps in that directory? Will there be any affect on how Windows on my SSD recognize or detect steam in my HHD?

Can that procedure be applied with Origin? Even though I have only one game installed so it's loss would be a minimum inconvenience.

No, you will delete everything axcept the steamapps folder and steam.exe anyway so there will be nothing to overwrite (all your Steam settings etc. would be redownloaded from the cloud when you sign in again). The steamapps folder won't be over-written when reinstalling no.

You may lose any screenshots etc. that you haven't uploaded/backed up though but that's about it.

There will be no effect on Windows recognising/detecting Steam either, as it's basically a fresh install of Steam after you've reinstalled Windows but without having to uninstall Steam first (which uninstalls all your games).

As for Origin you can save the game install yes (I'm assuming it's on the HDD also?) but you'll need to re-install Origin - I don't think simply deleting everything except the .exe works for Origin like it does for Steam.

The games are by default installed in a separate folder to Origin itself. And the good news is that uninstalling the Origin client does NOT remove the games.

So you can uninstall Origin before you reinstall Windows then reinstall it afterwards and provided you set the game install location to the same origin games folder as before, when you click install on the game Origin will detect the files (will take a couple of minutes), but won't need to redownload it all.

Okay, gotcha!

I'm gotta need a few days to prep, back up some things and settings and finish downloading some files before I begin.

Thanks for all detailed explanations! It's much appreciated!