All Discussions > Steam Forums > Help and Tips > Topic Details
Xida Apr 29, 2023 @ 11:37pm
My steam games ACTUALLY uninstalled themselves all at once.
Title says it all, I've checked control panel, the steamcommon apps, everything, they are gone, why did/is this happening and how do I prevent it, for context I was just playing Rainbow Six Siege and was in a Discord call, thats it, and my game crashed mid ranked match, and when I went to open it back up it said it was uninstalled, and then I opened steam, everything was uninstalled, after two restarts of my PC (first one wasn't enough to me) I have decided I need help from more than just myself and older posts about this.

TL;DR: My steam games are ACTUALLY uninstalled, not hidden or anything, please help me prevent this or fix it. :luv:
The author of this topic has marked a post as the answer to their question.
Click here to jump to that post.
Originally posted by ReBoot:
Ah, I'm gettin' it now. So the system didn't crash, the game did. As a matter of fact, I'm having a cloud in my brain myself at the very now, my therapist asked me to fill out a form which my subconscious soo ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ doesn't want to and I see for any excuse to procrastinate (i.e. on the forum). I think I've seen you mentioning that above, it's just that I'm a bit cloudy ATM.

So with the game crashing, that shifts the questions to what in the everdamn hell your library got "cleaned" by. I remember CCleaner and other "cleaning" or "optimizing" software ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ things up, but never EVER did those ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ touch a game's own folder so I don't think that's it.

For now, I'd say go with #2 and that shizz about observing how this develops. If it's a fluke, so be it and if it's not, the repeated pattern will point to the culprit. Speaking of which, SHOULD this occur another time, please don't restart immediately. Instead, check if the game folder is there still before you restart. You should even try to start the game before you restart and observe the result.

So, there's no point in keeping Steam & games separate. If you're going to spread your Steam library across multiple drives for space reasons, sure, go ahead. But in your scenario, there's no reason not to keep Steam on the SSD as well.

Assuming not all games are gone, the remaining ones shall be rescued. There's a complicated way to do that and a simple way. The complicated way means you won't move games between your HDD and your SSD twice but it takes more steps. The simple way involves moving your games between an HDD and the SSD twice but is a couple steps less. The complicated way goes:

1. Close Steam - fiddling with stuff managed by some program with this program running is as dirty as it feels.

2. Move those game folders, the ones you identified earlier, someplace else on the SSD. Create a new folder to keep them in temporarily to keep things nice & tidy. Since you'll be moving on the same drive, that won't take much time.

3. Start Steam, delete this library folder, close Steam again.

4. Now move the whole Steam folder to the SSD. I got my Steam in S:\Steam, guess what that "S" stands for :lunar2019coolpig:

5. Move those game folder into Steam's local SteamApps\Common

6. The only thing left to do is to change the shortcut you're using to start Steam. It's still pointing at the old location so delete it & create a new one from the new.

See if you're fine with that. If not, I'll outline the simple way.
< >
Showing 1-15 of 28 comments
Xida Apr 29, 2023 @ 11:38pm 
Side note, I do have a job so I will try and check this often, but I may be late to reply.
#1
Bonus! Apr 29, 2023 @ 11:44pm 
check the physical storage it could be that
Last edited by Bonus!; Apr 29, 2023 @ 11:44pm
#2
Xida Apr 29, 2023 @ 11:47pm 
My storage is intact, I have a 1TB SSD that I run my computer off of.
#3
ReBoot Apr 29, 2023 @ 11:50pm 
Originally posted by Xida:
Title says it all, I've checked control panel, the steamcommon apps, everything, they are gone, why did/is this happening and how do I prevent it, for context I was just playing Rainbow Six Siege and was in a Discord call, thats it, and my game crashed mid ranked match, and when I went to open it back up it said it was uninstalled, and then I opened steam, everything was uninstalled, after two restarts of my PC (first one wasn't enough to me) I have decided I need help from more than just myself and older posts about this.

TL;DR: My steam games are ACTUALLY uninstalled, not hidden or anything, please help me prevent this or fix it. :luv:
What do you mean by "ACTUALLY uninstalled"? According to Steam, or according to your filesystem?
#4
Xida Apr 29, 2023 @ 11:52pm 
My file system and my control panel on windows, the executables do not show up, it's as if I uninstalled them myself, but I didn't.
#5
ReBoot Apr 29, 2023 @ 11:53pm 
Originally posted by Xida:
My file system and my control panel on windows, the executables do not show up, it's as if I uninstalled them myself, but I didn't.
The control panel isn't the last authority, the file system is.

When you say "the executables do not show up", where do you expect them to show up?
#6
Xida Apr 29, 2023 @ 11:56pm 
In my steamapps - common, I mod FO4 and Skyrim a lot so thats where the games should show up.
#7
ReBoot Apr 30, 2023 @ 12:02am 
Ok, we're getting there. Now when you say that the executables are missing, are only the executables missing or all the other files as well? Are the folders missing?
#8
Xida Apr 30, 2023 @ 12:03am 
Ok I made a mistake saying executable's my bad, the whole file is missing yes, it's like it was never installed in the first place.
#9
Xida Apr 30, 2023 @ 12:12am 
Funny spam, but I am trying to solve this issue as it genuinely is an issue to me.
#10
ReBoot Apr 30, 2023 @ 12:18am 
Ok, I get it now :p2chell:

I ask you to pardon me hammering on details. It's often the case that people describe something other than what they observe so if details don't add up, I'd rather get everything absolutely clear. I had numerous occasions of wasting a couple hours troubleshooting into an entirely wrong direction so I'm REALLY cautious about details. No hard feelings from my side and I dearly hope I didn't invoke those in you :p2chell:

With all that out of the way, this is a deeper problem. Steam listing games as uninstalled with the filesystem contents still being there happens when the system crashes. Also, on a couple other occasions, but crashes are a common one. All the files simply disappearing, now that's an odd thing to happen. Another odd thing to happen is you having to restart twice.

So far, everything's pointing at some really deep problem with your system. It could be a case of dying hardware, it could be a case of your OS install getting ♥♥♥♥♥♥-up on some deep level (which, oddly enough, doesn't have to be dying hardware).

There's a couple ways we can proceed. The ones I think of would be:
1. moar troubleshooting questions which may or may not lead to THE exact cause
2. rule out/solve software issues by reinstalling the OS
3. rule out/diagnose hardware issues by running hardware tests

Which one would you prefer to pursue?

On a personal note, I had a case of #2 recently. I had some REALLY weird ♥♥♥♥ going on and was about to blame it on faultry RAM, until Windows stopped booting. Still suspecting faulty RAM, I've used that MacOS-like (to my knowledge, Apple were the first to do this) where it downloaded & installed a fresh copy and viola, purrs like a kitten since then. On some moar personal notes, I didn't panic when my battlestation wasn't booting as I had my Deck (as well as a dock) by then and it does PC stuff everdamn well.
Last edited by ReBoot; Apr 30, 2023 @ 12:19am
#11
Xida Apr 30, 2023 @ 12:24am 
Dont worry about too many details, with whats going on any information is better than none, I do not believe it could be dying hardware as I've had the computer for only 5ish months (got it last christmas) now it may be damaged hardware but I did have a PC shop help me with my Bios not booting (it was a simple fix, I put my ram to run above its max speed, they just rest it to default) so I don't think anything could be damage, still is possible though as anything is. Now I 100% can confirm the games are gone, I am unable to just click the install button and it pop up with a small file, it's downloading the full thing as if it was never installed, I think troubleshooting would be the best option as I do not have good wifi to reinstall things quickly. Thank you for your help so far, I hope my typing is understandable im very exhausted.
#12
ReBoot Apr 30, 2023 @ 12:32am 
Take your time please :p2chell: This is a forum, not a chat so reply once you got the headspace after taking a nap, bath, or whatever you do to chillax. There will still be time afterwards :acleap:

Now on to the problem. The two oddities here are you restarting twice as well as the filesystem genuinely disappearing. So:

1. What happened after restarting for the first time which prompted you to restart the second time? This may very well point to the root cause.

2. Was just the game's folder gone or something else as well? To paraphrase the question, what are the exact paths of the filesystem entities which are gone? While we're at it, am I understanding correctly that you have exactly one drive in your system where the OS is installed, along with Steam, with you using Steam's default storage location for games?

Please tike your time answering the questions. I haven't seen EXACTLY THIS error display myself nor on the forums, so getting the full image from observed behavior looks like the most logical next step.
#13
Xida Apr 30, 2023 @ 12:39am 
To answer 1. My PC basically crashed after the first restart which worried me, it was a little slow when first coming on and I tried opening steam again and it did that god awful brrrrrrr sound for a second, black screened, then the screen came back but was stuck, after I used the power button to restart it the second time it's working fine, I assume this was either caused by the PC just bugging out or I may have a Bios problem that occurs randomly, either way Im hoping it doesn't come back.

To answer 2. The games folder is gone, lets say I want to play Team Fortress 2, that folder is no longer in my apps, the exact path I take is This PC > Locak Disk (C:) > Program Files (x86) > Steam > steamapps > common, and within common I find none of my games that I had installed before hand, I do have two storage devices on my computer, I believe my Hard Disk Drive is running my OS and Steam, but all of my games were installed on my SSD, and I do have the latest windows update, and have run a quick virus scan using windows scanner, however I do not know its effectiveness.

I appreciate your patience, thank you.
#14
ReBoot Apr 30, 2023 @ 12:42am 
BRR sound? Please elaborate on that. A god-awful BRR sound must be paid attention to! Does it come from your HDD?
#15
< >
Showing 1-15 of 28 comments
Per page: 1530 50

All Discussions > Steam Forums > Help and Tips > Topic Details
Date Posted: Apr 29, 2023 @ 11:37pm
Posts: 28
Start a New Discussion

Discussions Rules and Guidelines