I had to reinstall windows 10. What happened was when I logged in it would go to a blank screen with a window that said CMD.exe or something like that. Now that I restored Windows, Windows is working good. But my games on Steam aren't installed, and still my harddrive space is used up. Why is my harddrive space used up if my games aren't installed? I need to install games but I can't because my harddrive space is used up. I haven't tried installing games on Steam but I'm not sure what's going on here.
Question Reinstalled windows wheres my games?
- Thread starter shanyin37
- Start date
RoccatKanga
Prominent
- May 10, 2019
- 40
- 1
- 545
If you have a god bandwidth, I would recommend deleting the files on the harddrive you identify as games and reinatall via steam
Could be
Could be there is a windows.old folder on the new formatted portion because you didn't format your hard drive properly. I guess its in your windows C: Look for a folder called windows.old or something like that.
Well, the games on Steam are shown as installed, but they do not play. I can delete them, or I can install them and it won't take very long because it just needs to search for the files. My games on Origin seem to not be installed and I have no space. This is odd.
- Jan 16, 2014
- 4,147
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- 26,990
It's most likely as the user "iseeu" said.
If you open Explorer, then go to "This PC" then go to your main drive, you will see a folder at the bottom labeld "Windows.old".
Inside this folder navigate to "Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\" and in there you will find all your games most likely.
Simply back up a folder to "steamapps" then open another Explorer window and navigate to the same directory but in your main drive outside of the Windows.old folder then just drag and drop the "common" folder to move it over and then restart Steam and do a library check and all your games should show up then.
After this, you can open the start menu by pressing the windows key on your keyboard, then type "Disk Cleanup" without quotations and run that program.
After running the program and selecting "OK"and getting the list, scroll down the list until you see the option for cleaning up Windows.old folder.
If you don't see the option, then click the button at the bottom that says "Clean up system files" and redo the list, the scroll through until you find it and select it.
Make sure to deselect every other option before clicking the "OK" button to clean the folder up and remove it from your system to free up space.
If you open Explorer, then go to "This PC" then go to your main drive, you will see a folder at the bottom labeld "Windows.old".
Inside this folder navigate to "Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\" and in there you will find all your games most likely.
Simply back up a folder to "steamapps" then open another Explorer window and navigate to the same directory but in your main drive outside of the Windows.old folder then just drag and drop the "common" folder to move it over and then restart Steam and do a library check and all your games should show up then.
After this, you can open the start menu by pressing the windows key on your keyboard, then type "Disk Cleanup" without quotations and run that program.
After running the program and selecting "OK"and getting the list, scroll down the list until you see the option for cleaning up Windows.old folder.
If you don't see the option, then click the button at the bottom that says "Clean up system files" and redo the list, the scroll through until you find it and select it.
Make sure to deselect every other option before clicking the "OK" button to clean the folder up and remove it from your system to free up space.
I can't find a steamapps folder but I did find some folders that have names of some of the games I play but they are not there in full it is only some files and it is only some of the games. But yes the windows.old is on my C:/ drive. Also, when I try to look at some of the folders it says I do not have administrator privileges. But on my account page it says I do. Not sure what the solution to that is ?
Thanks
Thanks
- Jan 16, 2014
- 4,147
- 281
- 26,990
looks like you just need to get rid of the Windows.old folder and start downloading the games fresh again.
However, I would suggest finding all the save folder locations for your games and try to recover as many save files as you can that don't get backed up to the cloud automatically and then redownloaded when you install the game again.
However, I am going to assume you are on a desktop computer.
And that your current drive is an HDD.
What I would highly recommend is to get an SSD.
Something like 250GB is perfectly fine.
And then backup important files and data from your current drive to the cloud, then remove the drive from the system and install Windows clean to the SSD, then put the HDD back in the system and wipe it clean and download all your games again, but put them onto the HDD, that way from then on, if you ever need to do anything to your boot drive, your games won't be affected.
Possibly save data on the main drive, but games won't be harmed.
In fact, you can keep literally all important data on the HDD that way in the event that you need to do a clean wipe and install of Windows again on the SSD, you won't lose any important data because it's all on the HDD.
Just be sure that if you ever have more than one drive in a system, that when you go to install Windows onto a drive, that you disconnect all other drives so that Windows doesn't install it's MBR to a separate drive which becomes a pain in the butt if for example it installs the MBR to an HDD while the OS is on an SSD and that HDD craps out and you remove it to replace it, then the MBR is gone and you won't be able to boot into your OS if that happens. It's sucky.
However, I would suggest finding all the save folder locations for your games and try to recover as many save files as you can that don't get backed up to the cloud automatically and then redownloaded when you install the game again.
However, I am going to assume you are on a desktop computer.
And that your current drive is an HDD.
What I would highly recommend is to get an SSD.
Something like 250GB is perfectly fine.
And then backup important files and data from your current drive to the cloud, then remove the drive from the system and install Windows clean to the SSD, then put the HDD back in the system and wipe it clean and download all your games again, but put them onto the HDD, that way from then on, if you ever need to do anything to your boot drive, your games won't be affected.
Possibly save data on the main drive, but games won't be harmed.
In fact, you can keep literally all important data on the HDD that way in the event that you need to do a clean wipe and install of Windows again on the SSD, you won't lose any important data because it's all on the HDD.
Just be sure that if you ever have more than one drive in a system, that when you go to install Windows onto a drive, that you disconnect all other drives so that Windows doesn't install it's MBR to a separate drive which becomes a pain in the butt if for example it installs the MBR to an HDD while the OS is on an SSD and that HDD craps out and you remove it to replace it, then the MBR is gone and you won't be able to boot into your OS if that happens. It's sucky.
- Apr 1, 2019
- 31
- 4
- 45
The windows registry was most likely wiped when you reinstalled Windows. Even though the directories are still on the disk you need to reinstall all of them again
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