Steam Assets Folder / "Common" Folder

[zayphod]

I just recently built a new PC. Prior to intalling everything I backed up the steam/steamapps/ folder to an external 1 tb drive. The old PC was Win7 32 bit. The new PC is Win7 64 bit. When installing everying, I used my Skyrim install DVD to put the Steam folder in place.

I stopped things because I had an issue getting my steam guard password (seems that the e-mail from them was stuck in the interwebs somethere between their server and myself). Once I finally got that issue resolved and was able to reactivate my account on this new PC, I stopped steam and noted the new location program files (x86)/steam/steamapps/ and proceeded to copy back the files from the backup to the new HD location.

Steam only noted that two games were available to play right away: Skyrim and Trainsimulator 2015. All other games seem to need to be downloaded again. Tried to do the "delete everything except the steamapps folder and steam.exe and reacquire it again but each time I do this, it still only sees Train Sim and Skyrim.

The only common element for those two games are that they're (apparently) duplicated in a folder called "common". I just finished re-downloading one of these games (Battlestations Midway) and it ended up putting the new folder into the "common" folder.

This total path reads:
c:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common

Should I be copying everything to the common folder instead, then reinstall steam? I really don't want to download gigs of stuff I already have backed up if I don't have to.

Appreciate the advice. Thanks.