Changed drive letter, now Steam can't find game executables


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You should be able to fix this problem by going into the appmanifest files in your steamapps directory. These files can be edited with any text editor. Fix any of the "installdir" and/or "appinstalldir" values that are in these files to point to the game's new location. Make sure you restart steam after doing this or close steam before doing it. Unfortunately I don't know why this problem occurs.

THANK YOU! This was driving me freaking crazy, but your solution fixed it! Took a good hour of pain, changing 2 letters in over 150 files, but it worked! Had to register just to say that. Cheers man!

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I too registered just to say thank you to nuebee.  Your suggestion of editing the appmanifest files that were wrong was spot on!

And to the other users who give the O.P ###### for saying that it's not your business and to stay on topic... he has every right to say that.  His reasons for changing drive letters are irrelevant and he would have obviously chosen to change the drive letter back if this was something he wanted to do.

I'm amazed more people haven't come across this issue before with the introduction of SSD's (that was my reason).  You'd think Steam would have a FAQ's entry for this problem.
The game that was affected by the incorrect path for me was COD:MW3.  Every other game was fine after the data move.

 

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  • Here's how you resolve the issue. Open your steamapps folder. In there you will see a number of appmanifest_numbers.acf files. Open them up using notepad. Change the drive letter to what ever drive the games reside on now. Check the entries carefully as some may have 2 drive entries you need to change. Save the changes. Close and reopen steam. Start the game it may start and then fail the first time. Restart it again and all should be good.

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