Once it's tied to you Steam account, you never need your DVD again (if you have one).
Once you have your Steam account operating on you new PC, any software in your game list can be installed by selecting it and hitting the install button, or right clicking it in the list and selecting install.
If you are already using Steam on a PC, where all the Steam files are intact, you can probably repair it.
For instance, I have a dedicated gaming hard drive (drive F), Steam is also installed on that drive. If I were to fit that drive into a new PC, or wipe my C drive and re-install my operating system, then I should be able to recover all my Steam games without re-installing each game individually.
So if I have my new system running. I would browse to my F drive and the Steam install folder. I would delete everything (every file and folder)
EXCEPT the
steamapps folder, and the
Steam.exe file
I would now click and run the Steam.exe file. After logging into your Steam account, the background steam service should be re-installed, steam will become officially registered with the operating system, and the steamapps will be checked. You should be good to go now.
If you have SteamGuard Enabled, turn it off before going through this, otherwise you will have to go through the email verification process when you try to log into Steam.
If Steam and it's files are on your C drive (why?), and you need to format that drive. Then copy the
the
steamapps folder, and the
Steam.exe file off on go another drive or external drive. Once the C drive is formatted and the OS installed. Copy them back to the correct path on the C drive, creating folders if necessary :-
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps
Then do the same as I did above with the F drive
I am going to guess that this is more info than you really wanted ....... sorry about that