Reformatting help

[mattM_-]

I reformatted my windows again and my old installation is in my windows.old. I have my steam games and most of my programs on a seperate harddrive. How can I get my programs, steam, iTunes, etc. to recognize my new formatted windows?

 

[ShadowBlade72]

I'm not 100% sure what you're asking here. Could you please be more descriptive on what exactly the issue you're having is.

 

[Frank Booth]

I am not sure what you did was reformat. When you format a HD you erase the entire contents of your HD. You may have restored a previous restore point.

And if you format all the programs need to be reinstalled. You may want to have an external HD or burn to DVDs all your personal files prior to formating so you can copy them back to your HD after the format.

 

[mattM_-]

Ya I read my post and thought how vague it sounded. Ok, I reinstalled windows 7 and kept my older installation. Now, I have a seperate harddrive which contains steam and my games. If I try to click on steam, it says I need to reinstall because of the new version of windows.

Now is there anything that I can copy from my windows.old to go around a whole reinstallation of steam and the games under it?

 

[xKodiakx]

copy the folder that has the game files in it to another location. delete the steam folder and reinstall steam. copy the folder with all the game files back into the steam folder... make sure steam is closed and not logged in when you do it. You won't have to download all the games then at least.

 

[Simon]

If its the same OS, it should work fine by just copying it back.

 

[Black_Hawk]

Try downloading steam again (the installer), and if it shows up an option that says "Repair" then click on it, then all should be fixed, if not well... not sure what to do.

 

[chapp]

I HIGHLY advise against what you are doing. It's always safer, albeit, more of a pain to reinstall all your applications. The only thing that is safe to copy back over would be your data(music, documents, pictures). I guarantee you will run into issues down the line and will probably end up uninstalling and reinstalling the applications anyways.

 

[Passerby]

ya just copying your old apps over is going to mess up windows 7 uses different directory paths for program files and the registry wont be updates for the apps. just reinstall your apps and move your data over(music doc's etc) and copy the steamapps folder from the old steam install into the new one to get your game going again

 

[mattM_-]

I just started reinstalling programs. Luckily, I just had to install steam and it recognized my games from the get go. I just had to delete and reinstall/update L4D2 because it would start and play in the intro video but exit out when I would get to the main menu.