Launcher cannot find the game

Danikat

(I posted this in Players Helping Players but I realised it'd be more appropriate here and cannot move it.)

Earlier today I started ESO using the launcher and then, while the game was loading the computer crashed. When I restarted it the 'play' button on the launcher was replaced with 'install'. The game is still installed and runs perfectly if I start it from the .exe file, it's just that the launcher doesn't seem to know it's there, even though it's in the same place it was before.

This isn't a problem for now but sooner or later I'm going to need to use the launcher to update the game and I'd prefer to not have to download the entire thing again. Is there any way I can get the launcher to recognise the game again?

Danikat

I haven't been able to find a fix for this.

But in between trying to fix that I started looking for ways to free up some hard drive space (as a hold-over until I can buy another drive) and I noticed ESO was by far the biggest program on my PC and bigger than I thought it should be. Apparently old data doesn't always get deleted during updates.

So I decided to kill two birds with one stone and re-installed the whole game (from the web, not the disc). It freed up some space and fixed the launcher.

There might be less drastic solutions out there but if anyone else is having this problem that's one solution.