Uninstall Steam game fully

corblimey

I've bought a game on Steam, but it's acting strangely due to a history involving some cousins. I'd like to uninstall it and clean up whatever's on my HD from before, but the only instructions I could find were to 'remove local content' and 'validate content' neither of which had any effect.

I can see the game in my list of programs in Control Panel, so if I uninstall from there, and then redownload via Steam, should that clear everything up? Is there anything I should do in Steam first or instead?

Remove local content should delete the game. What do you mean it had no effect?

corblimey

Well I removed local content, then Steam took about 60 minutes to re-download some stuff, but the issues I'm having were still there

CastorTroy

You sure it's not just the game itself? Like Bioshock has trouble running on Windows 7 and needs some messing about.

What game and what's happening?

Retr0gamer

If it's because you had a, let's say, non legit version of the game beforehand it's probably something it screwed up in the registry in which case it's a hell of a lot more difficult to fix.

corblimey

I can neither confirm nor deny Retrogamer's statement (but yeah, that's it). So a full uninstall via Control Panel may not even adjust the registry?

Retr0gamer

You'll have to find the registry entries and change them and well that's not something that is easy or recommended to do. Save a windows reinstall you might be boned unless you can google help on it. The installed game is probably detecting those registry entries that the pirate game made and not booting or else the pirate copy just plain screwed up the registry for that game.

corblimey

Ok, shame, but thanks anyway

Kiith

You could always run ccleaner after you uninstall it, which will remove any old registry entries.

Wetbench4

corblimey wrote: »

Well I removed local content, then Steam took about 60 minutes to re-download some stuff, but the issues I'm having were still there

You might not have cleared all the local content though, check in the c\users\"username"\My Documents or c\users\"username"\Saved Games and delete what ever you can find relating to the game. Then run Ccleaner reg cleaner as Kiith said.

Stokolan

Kiith wrote: »

You could always run ccleaner after you uninstall it, which will remove any old registry entries.

What Kiith said. Uninstall the game and run ccleaner both its cleaner option and registry option

corblimey

I guess I should, but ccleaner scares me (unless they've revised it since I last used it) as it tends towards over-cleaning imho. It's not affecting the game too badly, I appear to be getting updates from the publisher, etc, there's just some achievements I have that I shouldn't have, and vice versa.

nesf

There might be some stuff left in AppData that is messing with things. You can remove this stuff manually but you'll need to unhide folders etc (google it) and I don't recommend deleting anything in there unless you're sure.

jumbobreakfast

Revo uninstaller is very good for getting rid of badly installed applications. It has a thirty day free trial so its handy for rare occasions like this. Usually with Revo I would re-install the application with Revo (if it has a setup file) so it can track every change that is being made during setup and then uninstall using Revo again. If you can't reinstall then you can also get Revo to try its best to find the dependencies of the application and allow you to uninstall it bit by bit so you can confirm every file and registry key deletion as you uninstall.

Its a good reason not to use dodgy applications as who knows what else is installed in your PC now.

corblimey

Definitely nothing obvious in AppData, I think the registry is probably the place to look, although I did a quick search and couldn't find anything obvious there either. After playing with it for a few weeks though, I sort of want to keep the busted version, the only downside appears to be I'm not getting any of the Steam achievements, which while they'd be nice to add to my CV, have little effect on my life. And when/if I buy a new PC, the version on Steam then will be clean and legit.

Kiith

Give ccleaner a go. You can turn off any auto options in the menu, and i use it regularly without any problems. I'd consider it a must have application on any computer.

Taylor365

+1 for ccleaner.

Uninstall then run the registry cleaner.