Steam Install - Reinstalled windows, wrong CD key

[dargish@gmail.com 0]

Hi all, I have the steam install of both Arma2 and Arma2: OA. I recently bought an SSD to use as my main drive so reinstalled windows onto it from a fresh format. My steam directory was on a separate drive so was unaffected. However Arma2 for some reason requires that its key be stored in the windows registry (which seems to go against the whole idea of Steam but nevermind) and of course it's not there so I can't play DayZ or even update to the latest Arma2 beta.

I've run the verify integrity check in steam and it came up saying one file was missing and it's re-acquiring, that didn't do any good, still no registry entry for it.

My question is mainly this, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to reinstall Arma2 completely, is there any way I can get it working without having to do this? And if I do have to do this is there any way of ensuring I don't need to download 8gb of data again as that would take all day on my connection.

Thankyou!

Darg

[Disgraced 1123]

You may need to ask at the steam forums.

The cd key is stored in the registry.

Are you running windows 7? Perhaps you forgot to run everything "as administrator". My admittedly questionable memory seems to be that this error comes up under these circumstances.

Also, I believe if you started I've like this, you'd need to run the base Arma II game, close it, then Operation Arrowhead, close it, then combined operations.

[lvg 1690]

Can you not just right click Arma 2 + OA view CD key then try activating them with steam?

I recently got a new SSD and steam was on a different install, so i had a fresh windows copy with no problems, seems odd

[dargish@gmail.com 0]

Okay I seem to have resolved this, there may have been an easier way to do it but the steps I took were these:

1: Close Steam and move the arma 2 and arma 2 oa folders out of the steam common folder and also remove the three .ncf files from the steamapps folder.

2: Restart Steam, Arma 2 and OA will appear as uninstalled. Now while steam is open copy the large data folders back into their respective locations. For Arma 2 I only copied the AddOns folder and the DirectX folder back into steam. For OA I moved the DirectX, Common and Expansions/AddOns folders back in.

3: Install Arma 2 then OA in steam. This will see the local files and avoid having to download the vast majority of the game files.

4: Run Arma 2 then run OA then install the beta.

That's as far as I've gotten right now, going to give DayZ a try and hope for the best. I wasn't even able to install the beta before so it's looking good.

[morrowwolf 0]

So did this work?