Reinstalling Steam/Installing Again

[mattlorimor]

Sorry if this has been answered before. I used the "search" to search the forums and could not find an answer I found helpful.

Anyway, my question: Right now I have Steam, HL2, CSS, etc. installed on my home desktop. I am a senior in high school and am planning on purchasing a laptop for college. Of course, I will be transferring all my games and save games to my new laptop. How should I go about doing this with Steam without running into problems (CD key errors and stuff like that)? A list of steps would be nice. You do not have to go into too much detail. Just a brief overview will be fine.

Thanks in advance for all the help.

 

[Beerdude26]

Well, you might first want to install Steam on the laptop first

Then, log in with your username (make sure you're not logged in on your desktop).

Then you just take the folders (Found in <location where Steam map is>/Steamapps/<your Steam username>) of your games and copy them on a (rewriteable) DVD or something else and put the folders in the respective locations (Your laptops <location where Steam map is>/Steamapps/<your Steam username>). Make sure Steam isn't on when you do this to prevent possible problems.

Second, you'll have to copy the .GCF files. (Maybe also the .TMP .GCF files if you have any) They take in a lot of space, so keep a DVD or three handy
They can be found in "<location where Steam map is>/Steamapps/". Just copy all of them. Don't forget your SourceMods folder in "<location where Steam map is>/Steamapps/" if you want those too

That's it, I think. When you've done all that, fire up Steam again on your laptop and see if it worked. If nothing shows up, try deleting the clientregistry.blob in "<location where Steam map is>". (Make a backup of it first by copying it into another folder and renaming it to clientregistry.BAK)

Restart Steam. If there's still nothing, just double-click on the game you want installed. It'll say something that it will have to download a lot of MB's, just let it run. It should simply jump to a 100% (or near) in a few seconds. (Because you already have the majority of all the necessary files)

That's it, I think. I just remembered that there's also a backup function in Steam itself, but I'm too lazy to write a tutorial on that
(If you want to use it, just go to "My Games" and right-click on an installed game and select "Backup Game files..." from the drop-down menu. Then you can select all the games you want backed up, the size you want the files to be in and just let it run. But I've had a few problems with it (I lost a lot of screenshots due to that ) I'll let you decide what you want to do )

 

[Przemek]

I think it's going to be a lot easier to just copy the whole Steam folder to the laptop and delete ClientRegistry.blob there. Steam will update itself and check for games in \SteamApps. Then you just have to re-enter your password.

 

[Beerdude26]

Or that D:

But my explanation seems more specific and professional because of the length of it

 

[mattlorimor]

Thanks a lot Beerdude26. Your explination really helped. I am pretty sure that I understand what I need to do now.

As a side note: I am extremely happy I decided to join these forums. For the most part, everybody is very helpful towards everyone else. That is what makes the HL2 community so great.

 

[Beerdude26]

Yeah, just don't go to HL2W0rld (The name is banned, so we have to make the o a 0), they're a horrible community full of pricks (well, the majority)