Linking games after reinstall

[John McCreedy]

Bear with me because this might get a bit complicated.

I have two drives. Across those two drives I have Steam games spread. I have just had to reinstall Windows and subsequently Steam and now the Steam Client - Client, because this is important - thinks my game is not installed. But it is. I can play it with or without Steam installed (yes, it's a Steam game).

What I would like to know is whether there is a way to link the games back to the Steam Client without - without - using the 'link non-steam games' function. Using that creates a second entry in your library and that is something I want to avoid. As is reinstalling the game.

So in short, I want to link my existing library entry to my game files.

Does anyone know of a way to do this, please?

[ReBoot]

Yes. Start downloading the game with Steam, into the same library folder where the game currently sits. Steam will discover the existing game files.

[John McCreedy]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Yes. Start downloading the game with Steam, into the same library folder where the game currently sits. Steam will discover the existing game files.

You are a star, thank you. Next question. How do I force an update? Because of the reinstallation I'm running a version behind.

[Cathulhu]

Steam will detect that and do the update for you.

[John McCreedy]

It hasn't nor has verifying game integrity worked. I've come up with a work around by subscribing to the Beta (which is actually now the release). For some reason Steam thinks the game (Stellaris) is still up to date but it isn't. Hopefully it'll sort itself out come the next update.

[Blueblood]

I kind of have the same issue. My pc crashed while verifying integrity of game cache and now it wants to reinstall the game completely even though I just played the it 30 minutes ago. I have no options under local files, browse, backup, delete, etc. I manually verified all my content is on my SSD but I don't have the storage space to restart a whole download. Everything I have read says it won't downloand any content you have installed but I can't get passed the storage space issue

[LasseS]

I have the same now in 2022. Only I have installed the games previously into a custom folder and now Steam doesn's allow me to install into the same folder anymore. I am currently copying the game files into the Steam default folder but do not know if it recognizes the game that way..

[John McCreedy]

I can't remember for sure but I think I had to reinstall the entire thing to get it working. Sorry, it's been six years, I can't remember. I hope you can find some help but you might get more luck with that making a new post.

[LasseS]

For me the games started install and took some time to ’find’ the old install files, but worked after that ok. Save games also have worked on all my games revived so far..