Reinstalled Steam and lost ALL my saves

[Archangel]

It started when I couldn't enter Dota 2 without having it lock up on me on the main menu. I thought maybe to delete and reinstall steam to see if it worked (it didn't). It took a long time to delete steam this time around. I thought my cloud would be enabled and allow me to contiue playing the games I had, at the same progress point. Little did I know I turned off cloud for everthing, and I didnt back up anything. The only game right now that has my progress is Banner Saga 2 for some reason. EVERYTHING is gone: 80 hours in Tales of Symphonia, X number of hours in Thief 2, Mark of the Ninja, Maybe Kotor 2, etc..

I don't want to hear the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that will say "You should've backed it up". I want solutions if there is any to be made. I'm currently using pandora to recover the files, but I don't know where to put them as soon as I recover them.

Hate sounding desperate for ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ video games, but please offer some advice on the situation. I lost time I can't get back and I don't think I'd ever want to replay anything if I can't get the saves back.

[The Giving One]

You are supposed to save or copy/backup your steamapps folder before you uninstall Steam.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9609-OBMP-2526

Right click that drive and go to properties. Select the tab 'previous versions' and see if you can get an older version of the folder from a restore point, if you have any restore points that is.

[Archangel]

Nope. No restore points for my c:/ drive. Honestly I know its my fault, but shouldn't it be made more clear that you delete all progress if you uninstall steam? I'm done with steam.

[The Giving One]

Originally posted by Archangel:

Nope. No restore points for my c:/ drive. Honestly I know its my fault, but shouldn't it be made more clear that you delete all progress if you uninstall steam? I'm done with steam.

Well, since some saves are stored in the game folders themselves, no, as they do get uninstalled with you uninstall Steam.

This is why some games store your saves in other locations such as your "my games" or "documents" folders. So if you do uninstall Steam and forget or make the mistake of not backing up the saves, those are not lost and left alone.

Depending on the game, you may have some saves still there in those areas of your computer. Some games create and store save folders in strange ways and different places on your computer. You just have to look for them.

EDIT..The possible bad thing here is that your reason for uninstalling Steam in the first place due to your lockup of Dota 2 almost surely had nothing to do with anything being wrong with Steam itself. We see people do this all the time. They think Steam is the problem so they uninstall and reinstall Steam, but that is almost always not the case.

The problem is whatever is causing the issue with Steam that is located on your computer/end. Problematic software, missing or not updated drivers, or misconfigured antivirus programs are examples here. They cause the issue in those cases, not Steam.

If you want to maybe talk about fixing that problem, the lockup, then we can maybe talk about that here but it may be worth suggesting that you start a new thread, since that is a different topic than lost saved progress, as that gets into actual troubleshooting methods for fixing the issue that locked up Dota 2.

[Archangel]

1.Where would a lost saved process thread go?
2.There isn't any antivirus downloaded on my machine or anything of the sort to my knowledge. I opened up task master and nothing was interrupting dota 2

[The Giving One]

Originally posted by Archangel:

1.Where would a lost saved process thread go?
2.There isn't any antivirus downloaded on my machine or anything of the sort to my knowledge. I opened up task master and nothing was interrupting dota 2

The thread is fine here, that is not what I was saying. I was saying/suggesting that if you want to fix what caused this in the first place, that is maybe a different topic and maybe it would be better to start a new thread.

Originally posted by Archangel:

It started when I couldn't enter Dota 2 without having it lock up on me on the main menu.

About the programs, antivirus is nowhere near the only one that you need to be concerned with. There can be several/many that conflict.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9828-SFLZ-9289

And that does not get into drivers either. If you don't have system/GPU drivers up to date or your OS is not officially supported on your hardware, that can be an issue also.

[Archangel]

I can look into it later, the main concern is with my saves. If I use pandora (file recovery program) and it restores all the files I lost (which it has) where do I put the files in my folders in order for it to show up in game? When I recover my saves for Symphonia for instance, and put it in steamapps/doucuments which is where the original saves were, it doesnt work. Does it work if I take off cloud? Or am I just ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and should just go ♥♥♥♥ off to the corner for what I did.

[The Giving One]

This is my suggestion to you. Take all those saves that you have recovered. Place them in a nice, safe place to the side somewhere on your computer. Heck, make another copy of them also just in case for now.

Start a new game in any game you wish. Save that game after you start it so the save folders can be created in their proper places. Now, exit the game and manually search or use Google to find where that game stores it saves. Some will be in the steamapps/common/(name of that game) folders. Some may be in documents. Some may be in "my games". Like I said, some games store saves in different places.

Now, simply drag in the old save that you found using Pandora and place it in the same folder as the new save that you just made. Start the game and your save should be available to load and play.

Some games may keep just one running save file, so you would have to totally replace the saves, instead of adding the old save to the folder. Depends on the game and how that game saves progress.

If this was me, I would make a second copy of all my saves before starting this process. If you make a mistake or something gets corrupted, you will lose the save. Make sure Steam is closed when doing all this, too.

[Archangel]

Hey giving one. Really appreciate your suggestions and help. I'll have to figure out how to make the recovered steam files work, but I've got bigger issues right now( like resetting my laptop completely and wiping all programs like excell and word) and might get kicked out because of it. If you'd like to talk I'd appreciate it because I'm going over a rough patch.

Once again thank you.

[Blaxor]

Hey man, I hope you're having a good day. Did you find any solution you could share? I just updated the O.S a week ago and thought steam had the saves or game data or whatever on some cloud thing but it does not, or at least that's what I believe:

turns out that I downloaded steam and installed it again all as usual, I went to CS:GO so I opened it as always, "play" button on library as it was available. It was all okay, every progress and items were the same. I didn't open any other game between that and now. But just today I did the same with Far Cry 2, I wanted to play it but the saved games we're not there, the game only gave me the option to start a new story so I'm kinda mad about it. I will keep reading around forums and trying stuff but if you had any solution I would be grateful if you land it over.

I will update as well if I make any progress