Uninstalled and re-installed steam, and now none of my downloaded games are showing up.

[ifuawakeuafake]

Hey all, so I know this sounds foolish, and I'm going to own that. But the steam client wasn't working, as in, it wouldn't launch when i clicked on the icon on my taskbar. I would click and click, and nothing would happen. I uninstalled the client from the program files (x86) folder on my pc and re-installed it from the internet, but now the client won't recognize any of the games i've already downloaded.

I've already tried moving all the program files from the "common" folder to a new one and selecting that one from the download settings page, and I just got the message saying "steam can handle multiple folders in the same drive" or whatever, which is clearly not true because none of the games in there are showing up! I tried just launching them but the client just goes into download mode, which I'd really rather not do because it takes entire weekends to download even just a decent-sized game due to my internet being garbage, and I'd also rather not have two copies of the same game taking up space on my hard drive.

Is there anything I can do? I've already downloaded and installed the games, I even launched one last night that I was really looking forward to playing today after work, just to test it out, but instead I'm in this mess.

[chasingEcho]

settings>downloads>Steam library folders

[xarvn]

It sounds like you moved the downloaded game files to another folder in your C: drive other than to where Steam is installed i.e. "C:\Program Files\Steam." Steam will not allow two library folders in the same partition. Exit completely out of Steam and then copy/move the game files back to where Steam is installed making sure the .vdf files are also copied/moved. Then restart Steam.
In future if you need to reinstall Steam, do the following:
1. Delete everything in the Steam folder EXCEPT: (1) steamapps folder (2) userdata folder (3) steam.exe file.
2. Run steam.exe.
Alternatively, you can move the userdata and steamapps folders to a safe place and then completely delete or uninstall through Windows the Steam installation. You can then install Steam anew from store.steampowered.com. Thereafter, restore userdata and steamapps to where Steam is installed.

[ravioli]

Originally posted by chasingEcho:

settings>downloads>Steam library folders

this option isnt even showing up in settings anywhere

[tintingaroo]

@ravioli
Things are now performed via Settings > Storage > click the drop-down at the top.

(and just in case this applies to you: if you're dealing with multiple libraries on the same drive things need to be added manually rather than via Steam's regular process, one way is described here: https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/4365752495731649458/#c4365752495732171425)

[Connie]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.