Ok, so I loaded all my steam to my F/ drive, and thats all thats on it, it's been working fine like that for a couple days now. I lost power to the modem cuz my kid turned it off while I was playing TF2. When I figure out whats going on, I get the modem restarted and the *poof* Steam dosent work any more. It tells me I dont have sufficent permission, or wrong path or invalid file name. So I go and uninstall Steam off my F/ drive and reinstall it on my C/ drive, then copy it to my F/ drive and delete it off my C/ drive. Now all my files are still there (game files on my F/ drive) but Steam dosent see them. Any suggestions on how to get Steam to recognize them without deleting and reloading everything?

...

Bullgod, check Steam's registry keys. See if it's set to identify the directory you want as the directory it's information is stored. If you get into regedit, go to HKEY CURRENT USER -> SOFTWARE -> VALVE -> and then check the half-life, half-life 2, and steam folders for a directory or path.

There are also registry keys in HKEY LOCAL MACHINE -> SOFTWARE -> VALVE. Check that one too.

Then, edit the data in the key to be what you need it to be.

That's where I would start if I had this problem.

--Locane

It's alright guys, thanks for the help. I just reformatted my F/ drive and loaded it all again. It's not like I had much to lose. Lost all my binds and maps and stuff the first time around. It was just a pain in the ass is all. But I do appriciate the help.

Just really dont understand how it got lost in the first place. I set it all up back in my F/ drive again. We'll see if it holds out. I thought I was being slick by putting all my steam stuff on a seperate hard drive, figured if anything happened I'd atleast be able to save that stuff. As soon as I get the cash together I'm gonna buy a 500gig external hard drive and dump my whole comp on it. I'm still gonna try and keep Steam seperate, it frees up space on my other drives. I only have 2 other 80gig's. It's not much, but it's a whole lot more w/o Steam on em..

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822204068

$239 External 1TB

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136151

$239 Internal OEM SATA 1TB


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136025

$123 External 500GB

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136178

$99 Internal OEM SATA 500GB

Thanks Locane..

Well, lastnight after I reformatted, all I loaded on my F/ drive was just Steam and TF2. It played fine for a while so I shut it down and went to bed. Woke up this morning and same thing again. Do ya think that it just has to be loaded on my C/ drive? Or maybe a problem with my F/ drive? What I dont understand is that it worked fine for the first couple days on my F/ drive without any problems. Mind you, that is the only program on my F/ drive. Do you think it's looking for a /Program Files folder possibly?

Anywayz.. gotta go to work, I'll check back when I get home.

Ok, so I checked out my registry stuff, it seem everything is ok.. I guess. However, do ya think everything has to be in a folder? Right now looking at SteamPath all it says is f:. Do ya think I should create a folder and name it whatever and put that in regedit so it actually has a path? Is f: really considered a "path"? So.. f:/whatever and move all my Steam files inside of it?

Search regedit for ModInstallPath - that should be in valve/steam someplace, and should point to your steam install, with a full path, right up to "half-life".

If your Steam is refusing to remember where it's installed, and your drives are not shuffling letters, I'm not sure what would cause that.

I would, however, uncheck the option for Steam to start with windows, and start it manually - maybe some uninitiated/unmounted drive, some GCF getting scanned on boot, or some similar such weirdness causing Steam to think it isn't where it is. Steam's sense of identity is very fragile.
_________________
"They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program."— GW, Debate in St. Charles, Mo., Nov. 2, 2000
Thothie

Unchecking the start with windows option makes sense kinda, but I cant even get steam to start right now. Lastnight I uninstalled Steam and reloaded it, when I did, Steam would work but it wouldnt start any of my games. And all of my game files were there. However, it did run for the first couple days fine, and I believe that I did uncheck the start with windows box that time come to think of it. So I'm gonna reformat F:/ again and load Steam and TF2 and see what happens. I'll change that setting first thing as soon as it's loaded this time.

And yeah, the mod path looks fine.
ModInstallPath REG_SZ f:/steamapps/myaccountname/halflife

Waaait... You've got steam installed on the root of the drive? That right there might be freaking it out. Stick it in a subfolder. f:\games or f:\steam or some such.
_________________
"i ate all my caps." -Ralph Wiggum
Thothie

Ya, thats wut I was saying.. it's not in any kind of folder. it's just on my f:/ drive. so if I create a folder, I'll have to go to regedit and change it there, add the folder, right? So.. f:/games folder? Not sure if I want to name it Steam folder.. it might confuse it maybe?

What I'd do, is make a folder, stick all your root into that folder, then reinstall Steam in said folder. (It won't re-download any files it already sees there, but it'll udate all it's registry entries, so it should be right quick) That'll probably resolve it. Steam is probably looking for bits of itself at a pre-defined root macro, and since it is in your root, it's probably just getting the macro litteral or a null for it, and thus can't find itself.
_________________
"Most of us don't realize how much we have to be thankful for until we have to pay taxes on it." - Christy
Thothie

I formatted my f:/ drive again and just reloaded Steam and TF2. I closed Steam and it came back up after making a f:/Main Steam folder so it may be working right. I'll find out as soon as I restart my puter.

So far so good. I've restarted my computer like 3x already and no problems. Steam & TF2 works.

It seems if you are going to attempt doing what I did by putting Steam on it's own hard drive, you can not put it directly onto the drive. You must create a folder to install it into first.

I'm going to wait untill the weekend before installing all of my games back onto my computer just incase I have a problem again, but I think that fixed it. So we'll see. Now all I have to do if try and find & load all my scripts and stuff again. I made a back-up TFC folder some time ago, I know it has a bunch of maps in it, but I'm not sure of my config or autoexec files.

However, thanks for you time and help guys, much appriciated.

For future reference, you can, usually, move Steam installs, even between two computers, as long as you use the steaminstaller msi and point it at the new folder, and then delete all the .blob files. This lets you move Steam about without having to download everything again.

Steam is not the only program liable to be fuxed with if you install it in the root either, so ye may wish to take that into account when trying that with other complex programs. (I recall someone having a similar issue when trying to install the entire Adobe CS3 suite to their root.)
_________________
"They wasn’t nuns, they was ninjas!" - Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellas
Thothie