Uninstalled Steam ... Accidentally deleted by my saves ... Restored!

Deus Ex HR has been unavailable for download to me via Steam (I tried for the first time yesteday), so I tried all sort of voodoo fixes as suggested by multiple threads on similar issues of this ilk on Steam Forums. As of this morning, I found a new thread from just yesterday, describing the same issue (unable to download the stupid DEHR game), but from multiple reporters this time, so I can probably assume it's a server issue and not me. One day, I will be able to play that game.

In the meanwhile prior to that discovery, I renamed the steamapp directory and userdata directories, and then proceeded to uninstall/reinstall Steam (one of those voodoo fixes). However, uninstalling Steam deletes the entire directory, and not just the default folders/files like any smart uninstall process ... including my renamed directories. Which meant I ended up deleting any saves on all my games which didn't use C://User/MyDocuments or Steam Cloud save. Doh.

That was just frustratingly unexpected, and I had already resigned myself to my fate (no big deal, all my favorite games thankfully do use MyDocuments). But it sucks to accept something without at least trying, and I quickly discovered that almighty Google had the solution for me right away.

Using this query, https://www.google.com/search?q=restore+steam+saves+uninstall, the first result is decidedly bleak, but the 4th result yielded this nugget, a forum post on Supermeatboy where a user laments uninstalling Steam and losing his SMB save. Well, another user suggests doing a System Restore. While deeply tempting to me, it seemed a little overkill. However, further down, it also suggests using "Restore previous version" on just the folder itself. wtf? I didn't even know such an option existed.

So I opened up the Steam Dir (now re-installed), right clicked the steamapp/common directory, selected "Restore previous version", only too see no option to restore. However, there was an option to "Open", and pow, my directory as it was last week. I then dragged and dropped the files into my current directory and voila, got my games and their saves back (I also had to copy over the ncf files for games I still had installed). Great job, Windows team! I'm actually impressed.

On a corollary, two months ago, after trying to troubleshoot a friend's malware infected computer for an hour (the symptoms were no internet connection) to no avail, I gave up and used a system restore to a point two weeks prior. It just worked, and internet was restored and presumably the infection had not yet occurred.

Lesson is, in Bleach/Accel World, the ability to restore things back to prior states are godlike skills, for Windows machines, it's just standard.