External drive error with my Steam games. Halp. :c

[Daedalus]

Okay, so a while ago I lost my ext. HDD with TF2, GMod and some other stuff installed on it, along with steam. I reinstalled Steam (not the games, just steam) so I could chat with people.
Now I found it.
I played fine earlier, but now it's loving up.
When I try to open TF2, it asks me to install it. When I try to run the hl2.exe I get an error about gameinfo.txt or something like that.

what do

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[Daedalus]

Bump. Please halp. :c

[Daedalus]

Baaaaaamp QQ

[KoopaScooper]

Are you sure everything needed for the games are in the steamapps folder?

[steve5451]

Uninstall it then re-install it.

[Hydrabisque]

Make sure you aren't using a patch hack to get all of the games, that can cause problems.

[Righteous One]

Unfortunately you will have to uninstall everything. Last time I checked steam had to be in the same folder as your games to work. If steam is still installed on your harddrive yon could try to launch it from there.

[steve5451]

Or move the files to your Steam folder.
:D

[KoopaScooper]

All these posts are bullstuffting you, all you really need is the stuff from the steamapps folder (source shared materials and etc.)
Install steam on it again and put the stuff from the old steamapps folder into the new one.
Tah-dah, you reinstalled without having to download everything again.

[Hydrabisque]

Delete everything except steamapps and Steam.exe
Restart Steam.
See if that works.

[xHerobrinex]

TF2 = F2P

steam be loving up

[Daedalus]

TF2 = F2P

steam be loving up

How does that have to do with Steam?
And I figured out that I can access games on and off, it's very strange. :o
When it goes off I can just unplug the hdd, and put it back in, then it works. :U