ESO Behaving as if uninstalled via Steam

AltessiaAlmeri

Hi,
So, one of my hard drives died at some point last night. This HDD had no bearing on my Games drive where ESO was installed. Although Steam was active in my notification tray as normal, it wasn't actively used by my PC, or so I thought. When opening up ESO this morning via the context menu of Steam, the launcher showed no link to the PTS, and the main game launcher offered "Install" rather than "Play".

The PTS option was easily rectified, I turned it on in the settings, and since booting up, this worked without having to download the PTS files. This clearly still saved the reference to the PTS install directory. I have logged in to the PTS, and everything looked to be working as I expected.

The main game, however, is a different story. I have followed various instructions on how to fix issues such as this without any luck. When I repair and download files, nothing appears in the "downloading" folder to delete that and the associated .AFC file, as some guides advise to do, so I'm out of luck. I've repaired it once and tried to download everything again, but it fails saying it can't download the patch manifest and then reverts to offering the "Repair" option again.

I'm at a loss. I can't understand how a failed hard drive with no connection to the Games drive could cause this. I may have to uninstall the game completely, but when Steam doesn't register it as installed in the first instance, I'm not sure how to proceed.

Help would be very much appreciated.
Thanks.

ZOS_Bill

@AltessiaAlmeri

What is the exact error message coming up after you try repairing or reinstalling?

AltessiaAlmeri

Hi @ZOS_Bill

Sorry for not adding to this. I've been at work. As I couldn't get it working yesterday and no one appeared to have the same issue, I uninstalled what I could and deleted the rest. Upon reinstalling, it is now working, so I can't confirm the exact particulars of the error message apart from every repair I tried failed due to "Unable to download patch manifest."

Thanks though.
Altessia.

ZOS_Bill

Thank you for the update that your last reinstall of ESO has fixed the issue. We will now close this discussion from further comments since the OP issue is resolved.