Trouble Discovering Game Data After Reinstalling Windows

[Abel G]

Here's what I'm trying to do: I have all my games backed up on a separate drive. After I installing windows 7 I install steam. Then I click on a game in my library and click install. Usually it will just discover the existing game data and skip downloading, but recently steam is just downloading them regardless. Here's the steps:

1. Select a game and click install
2. Steam discovers existing game data (I can hear the HDD)
3. Steam allocates disk space.
4. Steam begins downloading the game and apparenlty just overwrites the existing data.

My main drive (c:\) is a SSD and my backup drive (d:\) is HDD. I simply use the MKLINK command in command prompt to point each game to the HDD. It's worked before no problems. So I don't know why it's not working.

Any help would be appreciated, Thanks!

System:
OS: Windows 7 64 bit
CPU: i7 3770k
GPU: GTX 970
SSD: Intel 530 240 GB
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1 TB 7200

[Abel G]

*Update: It seems that Steam is discovering the game data for the games that are physically on my SSD local c:\ just fine without trying to redownload. The problem, it seems, is only with the ones I have linked using the MKLINK command. While steam does go through the discover process, it still trys to redownload.

[Braden]

I had this problem but if you have deleted the "appmanifest" files (They are in the SteamApps folder) I can't really help.

Everything else people said did not work when I posted a Discussion like this.

[cyanic]

Open the correct manifest with a text editor, and change the StateFlags to 4. Then validate the cache. You may have to change the BytesDownloaded entry, and add stuff to the MountedDepots section.

[Abel G]

Bradenm1, I actually do have a Steam folder backup. The only concern is that it's an older backup. I don't know anything about appmanifest, so whatever you know I'm all ears.

cyanic, where do I find the manifest file?