Overview
Smite frequently has quite a few issues with Steam and well, the game has issues itself as well. I’ve noticed that a lot of people who have said issues will find that the usual old method of uninstalling and reinstalling the game to fix their problems with the game to not be working. This is because when you uninstall Smite the old fashioned way, not everything is deleted including things like leftover corrupted files which were probably causing the issue in the first place. I myself have installed Smite around 4-5 times because of things like this to the point where I knew something was up and I was going to have to manually uninstall the game. I had Smite from the website for a while but switched back to Steam because of monetary purposes and surprisingly have seen little to no problems with my game so far. This guide is really meant to be a last resort for people who have tried everything to fix their broken game and have no choice but to reinstall, as well as people are having the same recurring issues even after reinstalling.
Intro
I’ve been having so many problems with SMITE lately first I was missing files, then I had to uninstall and reinstall which made the problems 10x worse and the launcher kept freezing so on and so forth. After literal hours of trying to fix it I raised the white flag and gave up and decided to just remove the game completely and just get it off the website which I recommend doing than getting it off Steam, there’s so many problems with the Steam version of Smite, it’s probably why LoL wouldn’t be good on here either. So for the ones of you who are either tired of all the bugs and trying to fix a lost cause this is the guide for you. This is mostly for people who want to do a clean install of Smite from the website instead of Steam after having installed it at least once from Steam.
Note: This guide doesn’t really support any other operating system besides Windows so if you use Linux or Mac I’m sorry I’m just not familiar with them.
Also, I’d like to give a special thanks to my friend EmethSAS for posting this guide for me when I didn’t have Smite on Steam and was unable to do it myself. (This was originally a discussion in the Smite section on Steam.)
Step 1: Removing Smite from Steam
- To uninstall Smite from Steam your going to need to go to your library, right click Smite and go down to Properties then click the Local Files tab and select Delete Local Game Content. After that, Smite will be removed from your library but there are still files that you will need to delete to remove it entirely from Steam.
- Next you want to go to Steam Support and click the Smite tab and then select the “I want to permanently remove this game from my account” and follow the steps till it says that Smite has been removed from your account. Also delete any shortcuts for Smite if there are still any.
- Go to your Steam folder directory C:Program Files (x86)Steam and go to the Smite directory C:Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonSMITE. If the folder with the name SMITE is still there then delete it. Now go back to your steamapps directory (x86)Steamsteamapps and find appmanifest_38630.acf and delete it if it isn’t already deleted, 38630 is the AppID for Smite.
- Now open the downloading folder in the steamapps folder and delete anything that has 38630 in the name if there is any.
Before you proceed, I highly recommend checking to make sure you’ve completely cleared your Steam folder of any leftover Smite data/files, go to the Steam directory folder and in the search bar try searching for keywords like Smite, Hi-Rez, Hirez, and 38630 to make sure you’ve gotten all the files.
NOTE: If you have any other Steam library folders you’re going to have to do all this for all of them.You can check to see if you do by opening Steam and going to the top-left hand corner and clicking Steam and scrolling down to Settings then press Downloads then Steam Library Folders.
Step 2: Removing all Hi-Rez Data
Note: DOING THIS WILL DELETE ALL HI-REZ GAMES SO IF YOU HAVE ANY OTHER HI-REZ GAMES I WOULD RECOMMEND PUTTING THE OTHER GAMES IN A DIFFERENT FOLDER ON YOUR DESKTOP BEFORE MOVING ON AND AFTER YOU HAVE FINISHED REINSTALLING SMITE, PUT THEM BACK IN THE NEW HI-REZ FOLDERS THAT WERE CREATED FROM REINSTALLING THE GAME.
(Also try looking up the folder directories yourself so you put your games in the correct folder, I didn’t list the folders inside of the Hi-Rez folders.)
- The first thing you want to try to do is uninstall any Hi-Rez programs such as the Hi-Rez Studios Authenticate and Update Service, from the control panel. Do not try and uninstall it from the Hi-Rez Diagnostics and Support program as it will either A: Not work at all, B: Crash, or C: Tell you to uninstall from Steam. What you want to do is go to Programs and Features by right clicking the Start button and selecting Programs and Features. Once you are in it try to uninstall anything with with Hi-Rez in the name or as the company name. If this does not work then go to these websites and follow the steps.
- Error Message When Removing Program with Add/Remove Programs [support.microsoft.com]
- How to Manually Remove Programs from the Add/Remove Programs List [support.microsoft.com]
- A Way to Uninstall Hi-Rez Studios Authenticate and Update Service [www.advanceduninstaller.com]
(You don’t need to get the uninstaller) - Another Way to Uninstall Hi-Rez Studios Authenticate and Update Service [www.uninstallapp.com]
- Removing Invalid Entries in the Add/Remove Programs Tool [support.microsoft.com]
If none of these work then you’ll need to right click the Start Menu and select run and enter regedit but first go down and read Step 3 before you continue. After you’ve done this navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREWow6432NodeMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionUninstall and find the {3C87E0FF-BC0A-4F5E-951B-68DC3F8DF1FC} key, before you delete it look at the DisplayName in the Name|Type|Data section next to the folder screen and make sure it has something about Hi-Rez is the name, if it does delete it and close Registry Editor.
- The next thing you need to do is go to the Hi-Rez Studios directory C:Program Files (x86) and delete the folder Hi-Rez Studios.
- Go to C:Program Files and delete any Hi-Rez folders.
- Go to C:ProgramData and delete any Hi-Rez folders.
- Go to C:UsersDefaultAppDataRoaming and delete any Hi-Rez folders.
- Go to C:UsersDefaultAppDataRoamingMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuPrograms and look through the folders and delete any Hi-Rez programsfolders.
- Right click the Start button and click Search. Now type “Folder Options” and click the tab that comes up. Next select the View tab and scroll through the advanced settings until you find “Show hidden files, folders and drives” and click it if it is not already turned on. This will allow you to find all of the folders containing Hi-Rez data.
- Now go back to the Start Menu search bar and search for the same things you searched for in the Steam folder (Smite, Hi-Rez, Hirez, and 38630) and also do this. Make sure the search is set to Everywhere. Open the file locations of the tabs that pop-up by right clicking them and make sure the rest of the information inside isn’t important and delete anything that comes up in the search. Also set the search to Files to make sure you get everything and also try the other search options as well just to be on the safe side. After you have deleted everything that has come up in the search, double check and search for the keywords again to make sure you haven’t forgot anything.
- Go to the This PC section of Windows File Explorer and type Smite, Hi-Rez, Hirez, and 38630 into the search bar to get rid of any possible crash files or log files that might be left, you might not be able to delete some if you have any browsers open.
- After you have deleted everything, go to the Desktop and right click the Recycle Bin and select Empty Recycle Bin.
Step 3: Clearing the Registry
*BEFORE YOU ATTEMPT TO ALTER OR CHANGE ANYTHING IN YOUR REGISTRY I HIGHLY RECOMMEND LEARNING THE ABOUT THE REGISTRY AND PROBLEMS THAT CAN ARISE WITH EDITING THE REGISTRY AS WELL AS ITS FUNCTION FIRST. DO NOT BLAME ME FOR RUINING YOUR COMPUTER IF YOU SCREW UP, CONSIDERING I HAVE GIVEN A WARNING AND GIVEN A SOURCE THAT EXPLAINS HOW TO FIX IT. DELETING ANY SINGLE REGISTRY ENTRY BY MISTAKE WILL LEAD TO SEVERE PROBLEMS OR EVEN SYSTEM CRASH.
Here are some articles that explain registry editing:
Windows Registry Info [support.microsoft.com]
How to Add, Modify, or Delete Registry Subkeys and Values by Using a .reg File [support.microsoft.com]
How to Back Up and Restore the Registry in Windows [support.microsoft.com]
This is optional, but you should back up your registry before attempting to edit anything, the article above explains how to do this so I don’t really feel the need to explain it myself.
- After you have read the articles and backed up your registry (hopefully), right click the Start button and select Run and type “regedit” without the quotes.
- Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftware and delete all registry entries of Hi-Rez.
- Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARE and delete all registry entries of Hi-Rez.
- Navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionUninstall{3C87E0FF-BC0A-4F5E-951B-68DC3F8DF1FC} and delete the {3C87E0FF-BC0A-4F5E-951B-68DC3F8DF1FC} key. - Then go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRuneg ui and delete all registry entries.
- Now navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetServices and delete
HiPatchService. - Close every Steam application running, you might have to use Task Manager to do this. To open it do Ctrl+Alt+Delete and select Task Manager then select the More details next to the arrow and look for any Steam applications running and right click them and select End Task. After you have done this open Run and type steam://flushconfig, this won’t affect any of your games but any custom settings will be put back to default, but this will make sure to replace any Steam files that may have been deleted or corrupted in removing Smite and will help make Steam run more efficiently. Press Enter, after running Steam will prompt you with a message and press Ok then restart your computer. After it has restarted, launch Steam from its installation folder C:Program Files (x86)Steam (use Steam.exe).
I’d also considering looking through the registry for any kind of Hi-Rez related or Smite related values or keys that might be left and searching for Hi-Rez, etc. in the Search one more time to make absolutely sure you removed everything and try to reinstall Smite. For those of you who want to get Smite from the website I’ll leave the link below.
Conclusion
Smite Download [www.smitegame.com]
These are some posts that I used for some information and I’d like to give thanks for helping me out with this:
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Here are some folder namefile location translations for people who use Windows XP. This is mostly to be used with Step 2. Hope this helps :).
Windows XP Folders and Locations vs. Windows 7 and Vista [social.technet.microsoft.com]