How to fix steam not detecting game files (Asking you to install the games again)

guys if you haven't yet then subscribe to my channel and press the bell icon and never miss a video from tucker friendly [Music] hi guys once again welcome to techofriendly so today i'm going to show you how to fix a most common steam related issue that many of you guys might be facing all right so quite recently many of you guys have been asking me about the solution of this so i'll show you what the issue is uh so you have got your game is already installed in your pc but whenever you are trying to click your game it is asking you to reinstall the game all right now this might happen most commonly when you might have relocated your games files accidentally or you are you have switched your hard drive recently or you are intentionally your switching drives and you just have to have your games detected in the steam library now this solution works for all these scenarios but the most common thing is you don't know you haven't done anything and out of the blue you it's asking you to reinstall your games again and when you go to the library also it is showing like this it's asking you to install your games all right and so now what you have to do is i'll explain this in steps so the step one what you have to do is head over to this team go to the settings click on downloads click on steam library and now for me i have got got my game files in data d so now here it is not detecting any of my games now many of you guys might have your games folder in local disk c now i have uh chosen my custom folder where i needed my games some of you guys might not even know where your steam games are located so i'll i'll uh also explain that to you in a bit so what you have to do is whichever folder if you have not uh selected a custom location then it's definitely local list c otherwise it might be the or it is whichever drive it you have your game files in so just click on the settings go to that drive click on that drive which which in which you have got the files click on the settings button and click on remove drive now i'll i'll tell you why i'm doing this now uh this scenario might be a little bit different for everyone but i am showing you the solution which works for everyone in spite of whichever scenario it might be all right this is the common scenario so you have the step one is to remove the drive in which you have got the files already in it now go back now uh you have to locate your steam folder now just like i told you many of you guys might not select custom folders you will just go with the default whichever folders team shows you so for those people who have your you have who haven't selected any custom location it will be in local dc and it will be in program 8 x86 and it will be the steam folder there will be a folder called steam uh now for me i have selected my custom location so it's in the d drive in d drive i have got my games folder and in games folder i have got my steam apps all right so now i have to make steam detect this folder which it right now isn't so the step two is to rename this folder now for the people uh of scenario one who haven't done anything uh it's steam folder in c drive so you have to rename that steam folder for those people for now for me it's this games folder so i'll rename it to games1 all right and what i'll do is i'll create a new folder and name it as games all right now step number three what you have to do is and this is the final step uh step number three is again go to settings click on steam library folders click on this plus icon and select the drive now for the people who have it in c drive with c drive select the steam folder otherwise for me is d drive and select the new folder new empty folder that you have created all right and click on select now why we have done this i'll explain explain it to you for many of you guys when you try to again select the folder with the games in it which is not empty it will throw an error that new directory needs to be empty now for me uh for many many of you guys it might not throw an error like that but the most common scenario is that when you try to you know add that folder again it will it will throw an error that it needs to be empty so uh i told you guys to create a new dummy folder which is empty for the sake of adding the drive here all right so that uh so the in step three only one more one more thing you have to do is go back to uh whichever location you have got your game folder in uh for the people with c drive its steam folder again remember for me its game folder so what you have to do is you have to delete the new folder that you just new empty folder that you just created and rename your old folder as games again okay for the people with c drive it's you have to delete the new steam folder and rename the old steam folder which you might have renamed whatever name you need as team only okay now after doing this what you have to do is go back to the game library and select the game whichever you need to install and click on install all right and select okay uh remember select the drive in which you you need the game you already have the folder that you selected all right so for me it's d games and click on next so what you might be uh seeing is something like this discovering existing files for grand theft auto 5. okay so when this is done uh you will be have you will be able to play your game again so this will fix uh your issue now this works for everyone for those who just don't know how this happened to you and for those people who have just switched their uh storage device and need their games to be detected again and also for those people who might have relocated their folders or you just want to switch between the drives you have to shift from local desk c to other drives this is for all those people so that's how you can solve this issue so i hope uh this video was helpful to you guys now if you guys have any doubt of any sort anything at all just put it down in the comment section and i'll try to reach to you guys as soon as possible all right so if you liked my video and if this worked for you give me a thumbs up and check out my channel i've got many other team related videos or gaming related videos i have a gaming channel called taco friendly games so you can also check out that and if you like my content subscribe to me so that's it for this video see you guys in my next video till then take care bye [Music] you

Channel: Techofriendly

Views: 43,469

Keywords: Steam not detecting game files, steam issue, Steam not working, steam games, steam error, games not detected, detect steam games, steam, steam library, steam game library, steam games folder missing, missing steam files, missing steam folder, steam installation issue, steam game installation issue, steam game error

Id: Udrp3s9lpzs

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 08 2021