I returned from holiday to find that my Seagate Expansion Portable 2TB external HDD had been knocked off my desk. Since then, it makes a quiet beeping sound when connected, and neither the drive nor its files appear in File Explorer. I didn't store any important personal data on it, so I'm not currently focused on recovering the files, though I may have the drive checked by a technician to confirm the physical damage.
The problem is that I had several games installed on the external drive. Steam now correctly lists those games as uninstalled, but Epic Games Launcher still marks them as needing repair and won't let me uninstall them. I'd like to remove the broken installation references so I can reinstall the games on my laptop's SSD. Is there a command or other method to forcibly uninstall or clear those entries even though the HDD is no longer accessible?
1 Answer
Epic keeps information about installed games in small manifest files on the main system drive. Close the Epic Games Launcher, then open `C:ProgramDataEpicEpicGamesLauncherDataManifests`. Each `.item` file represents an installed game. Open the files in a text editor and check the `InstallLocation` field. Delete the manifest files that point to the failed external HDD, and Epic should stop treating those games as installed or needing repair. You can then install fresh copies to the laptop’s SSD. Steam handles this cleanup more automatically, which is why its games already appear as uninstalled.
I’ll try this tomorrow morning. Thanks—this sounds like exactly what I needed.