Steam issues

Got some small problems with Steam after I re-installed Windows 7 on my computer. Mainly to hopefully solve some issues I had, like computer freezing whenever I use the print screen button. Now it is working, yay!

Anyway so the problem I hope you guys could help me with. I had Steam installed on HDD E: with games both drive E and G. Now after re-installing I also switched some cables so now my G drive is listed as E and E is listed as F. Installed Steam where I had it previously(E, now F) and it recognised the games I had on that drive. However they are technically not installed and so won't start. At least Saints Row IV won't start nor does Sleeping Dogs. Do I have to re-download all of them again? I am doing so with the games installed on the other drive. And it is a time consuming process that I hope to avoid with all my games.

TL:DR: Re-installed Win7, does Steam games installed on another HDD need to be re-installed as well?

Yeah, they need to be reinstalled, but only because it's a different Windows installation. If you uninstall Steam and reinstall it without reinstalling Windows, then the games on G: would've been recognized and playable..

On a side note, did you use the same computer name and username? I'm just wondering if Steam would've let you play the games if your info was the same. I doubt it would work, but I'm curious...

Oh well... I guess that means another 100 or 2 of GB to dl. So far DL 62GB. Delete the folders where they are installed and dl again right?

Edit: Re-dl and installing the rest of the games now... I do wonder if my ISP will notice that I am about to DL 350-400GB worth of games. I am not going to re-install all of them, but most of them. Oh then the Origin games as well... I hope the Steam games at least will be dl before I leave for vacation 10 days from now. :P

You don't have to reinstall the games; copy paste that's all; once you click on install again on Steam he'll read the files that already exist to make sure everything is 100% ready to play.

I've move Path of Exile from my PC to my laptop yesterday and everything is working fine this by method.

That didn't work =/ Well it worked with AoE II, but not the other games I tried with. So they are DL again now. My ISP is going to love me :P

you don't need to reinstall them.

i did the same thing, and while at first steam only recognized the games that were on the same drive, all i had to do was install the same game on another drive and upon doing so it would recognize all games on that drive.

for example, i had installed steam on drive E, with games on drives C, D and E. i removed drive E, installed steam on C.

now that i have steam installed on C, it doesn't recognize the games on D (E is disconnected). i have dota2 installed on D, so all i did was go in steam, "install" dota 2 on D. when installing, it recognizes all previous files and doesn't download data, merely checking and resyncing. it also then recognizes all games on D.

that's my experience, though i didn't reinstall windows. in fact, the reason why my steam was in E in the first place, was because that was my where my old windows were and i'd been running steam from there without even having to reinstall when after booting the new windows.

edit: also, i forgot to mention that i did copy paste the "steam library" folder from the root of C to the C:\steam\ folder to get steam to recognize the games in the same drive.