I reinstalled Windows and Steam and now all categories and shelves are gone

[justin]

I reinstalled Windows today and then reinstalled Steam and all of my categories and shelves are gone from my account. I have reinstalled Steam countless times over the years and this has never happened before. I have over 1000 games in many many categories and it's all just gone. It took me many years to get this set up how I want it and doing it again is not really feasible. I have tried taking the sharedconfig.vdf file from another computer where I have Steam installed and put it into the new Steam install and it doesn't help. Is anyone else having this issue? Were you able to fix it?

[Viking2121]

I Installed steam onto my server to use as a download cache for multiple users and myself and yeah all my organization has reset on that PC, If it did on my main PC, I'm not going threw the effort to reorganize them again....

[Neer0]

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/3814039097899004427/

More people have reported the same problem. Me too, after installing Steam on a new OS my collections were gone.

[IrisNebula]

Collections aren't stored in a vdf anymore. It may contain old data, but Steam doesn't read it back anyway.

Since it's now cloud synced, the locally cached copy is in

%LocalAppData%\Steam\htmlcache\Local Storage\leveldb

I don't know if copying it from another computer will work, but since this is a widespread problem currently, it may just be resolved by Valve instead, hopefully.

[Spynion]

The worst part about reinstalling steam or installing it on different devices?
All the custom artwork is undone, and you have to redo it all, and I had to do it twice, not because I do it for my favorite games, but because I have many game that don't have an updated artwork (i'm looking at you gd) and i have to fix that eyesore each time. Games so bad and old they are no longer on steam, or weren't launched to begin with. And I can't delete them, they were not free at their time nor do I really want to as they remind me of times when games were given away like candy, and damn there was a lot of candy

[IrisNebula]

Originally posted by Spynion:

[...]All the custom artwork is undone[...]

That's completely off-topic but I have a tip for you! I'll post it on your profile for anyone else interested, please let's not talk about this more in this thread.

[Spynion]

Originally posted by IrisNebula:

Originally posted by Spynion:

[...]All the custom artwork is undone[...]

That's completely off-topic but I have a tip for you! I'll post it on your profile for anyone else interested, please let's not talk about this more in this thread.

Thanks I would really appreciate a tip or fix for such a headache.

[justin]

Originally posted by IrisNebula:

Collections aren't stored in a vdf anymore. It may contain old data, but Steam doesn't read it back anyway.

Since it's now cloud synced, the locally cached copy is in

%LocalAppData%\Steam\htmlcache\Local Storage\leveldb

I don't know if copying it from another computer will work, but since this is a widespread problem currently, it may just be resolved by Valve instead, hopefully.

I copied the leveldb folder from my other computer onto my new install and it worked! I have all my stuff back! Categories and shelves, everything. Thank you so much! I hope Valve can fix this but if anyone else is having this issue this is a way to fix it for now if you have another Steam install to copy from. I'm not sure if this would work if I had opened Steam on the other computer first though as I did not want to chance it syncing with no categories. Anyway, THANK YOU!

[IrisNebula]

I'm glad it worked! I tested it myself after I posted here and it does, but it seems like you're just copying cached information, that's still not synced server side. I'm pretty sure you never risked the new installation syncing back with no categories, because the issue here is that you (and me, and everyone affected) have already lost them on the server anyway, that's why the new installation came up empty. They are empty on the servers already.

Since you currently still have them, making a single change to any category is going to push it back to the server so it won't be lost in the future, so maybe try that if you want. Right now if you install new on an extra PC it still won't be seeing the Collections.

Look here for more info:
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/3814039097893676035/

[spec24]

They didn't fix anything. Just lost all my Steam shelves and I didn't even do a new install!