Steam Not recognizing Game Installation

Haza_212 · July 2021

Hey all, Was just about to jump on ESO for a bit, when I clicked on the launcher, the steam download page popped up saying that I needed to install the game. I know that I had it already installed as I played yesterday. I check the game files and they are all on my computer. I opened the game launcher from the within my C: drive, but it didn't recognize it as a launch via steam, and I couldn't log in.

Has anyone had this happen to them before? How did you go about correcting this? Any help is welcome.

Cheers

RevJJ · July 2021

I’ve had this happen to me a few months ago and unfortunately the only way I was able to fix it was to do a full reinstall, for which I first had to remove all the installed files since I didn’t have a spare 150GB on my harddrive.

Haza_212 · July 2021

RevJJ wrote: »

I’ve had this happen to me a few months ago and unfortunately the only way I was able to fix it was to do a full reinstall, for which I first had to remove all the installed files since I didn’t have a spare 150GB on my harddrive.

Bugger, I was hoping to avoid that but I guess I'll just have to go with it. Thanks mate.

Tandor · July 2021

There was a topic on this a week or two back, it had some explanations and answers. I suggest you check it out.

ZOS_Bill · July 2021

The thread from earlier in the week with troubleshooting for this issue can be found linked below.

Game unistalled itself and now I have to reinstall it?

Tyreal1974 · July 2021

I think ZOS should require Steam to have a link to the pinned discussion about this issue on the Steam Forums so that new purchasers can read about this issue before they buy ESO and get stuck in the trap of having to buy something twice just to play. It is ludicrous that the combined developers of two major software companies cannot fix this problem that has been going on for YEARS!

Trinket61 · July 2021

Yup Happened to me as well , despite having played it a few hours earlier.

I stumbled around the steam menu system but could not for the life of me find the "repair"option , verifying game files didn't help cause steam thought no files were there to be verified.

I tried manually editing the appmanifest , because of course i could not find a current copy on the net , and thank the gods when i restarted the launcher checked for existing files.

It is a mixed blessing though , it did not find all the updates i am guessing so instead of enjoying myself playing the game i will spend the next 4 hours downloading files.

Better than a 21 hour reinstall i guess. Fingers burnt , lesson learnt - keep a current backup of the appmanifest