Installing old Games - Plus I don't know what I am doing with STEAM

[76561198286036736]

Hi There. I am either way too old, or did not pay enough attention to STEAM. I am still from the era where you'd simply enter a product key, and off you go. I fired up my PC, and want to install my original F.E.A.R. 3 that I purchase way back.

2 problems occur:

1. Even though I am the owner of this game, and have the physical key in front of me, STEAM tells me that it is registered with another account. No I am not completely disagreeing, because I recently fired this account up, and would have no idea what I used back then.

2. Second problem is when I launch the installer - Comes up with an error stating "An error occurred while installing appid 0 invalid backup path"

Please help Mr. Nube here.

Thanks.

[J4MESOX4D]

If the game is registered to another account then you need to login to the account it is registered on and launch it through there. DRM protected product keys can only be used once and registered on a single account so if you aren't the original owner and simply posses a code then there's nothing you can do aside from buy the game again on your account.

[nullable]

1. Sounds like you used the key way back when and forgot about it. People forget about accounts all the time. Managing accounts in a proper password manager negates a lot of memory issues.

2. Try reinstalling. Also what are your system specs? And are you installing Steam to the default location?

[Kargor]

You don't run installers found on disks that came with Steam keys -- you install through Steam. Always.

Back in the old days, Steam actually had an option during key redemption, to send a mail to the account that actually owns that key. Apparently, that was removed.
Still, try to recover your account by being logged out, and following the path where you don't remember anything. Maybe that still leads to an option where they will look up the account from a CD key.

[gopherbarney]

Okay well I'm here cuz i bought the fallout anthology wayyyy back but never got around to playing them all... or any besides 4. I know for a fact I'm using the same account because Fallout 4 is still in my library and installed on this new PC. But I still get the same invalid backup path despite never changing the install location for my library. Is this just Bethesda Bullshiddery? Or do I just need to buy a more modern DVD drive? Cuz this is a combo USB A-B +USB - 9v power...

[Nanami]

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