WARNING!!!!
Be warned!!  
I'm not 100% sure yet, as I am trying to figure it out myself...but If and when you need to Format and you want to keep your Black Ops Profiles, STEAM does not back them up on the server!!! If you want to back them up and save them, so as not to have to start all over again, save your "Common" folder in STEAM.
You can navagate your way there.

For Window Vista and 7:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps-Common is in here.

For XP:
C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps -Common is in here. Also, for XP, there used to be a Valve folder in Program Files,if you can't find STEAM....

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If you can't take the pain, maybe you shouldn't play!

Please Delete this post!!!!

I gave some bad information!!!!!

The single player profile might be saved here, but your online seems to be stored on STEAM server side...

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If you can't take the pain, maybe you shouldn't play!

Regardless, I HIGHLY recommend keeping an up to date backup of your entire steamapps folder.  This way when you need to do a reinstall you don't have to redownload everything again.  You can just drag that entire folder back in to the Steam folder.  You then start, or restart Steam and once you go to the Library tab you either right click the games and choose to update or install game, or if they are already ready just double click to launch the installation process.

Still not a bad idea from what I hear to back it up.

GOA.Luke*BK*

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Ok, so, I guess leave this....lol....I didn't know you can do that with the STEAMAPPS folder. I tried that and got error messaged, but I didn't restart STEAM....so I think that was my issue...I'm re-downloading/Installing all my games now....lol

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If you can't take the pain, maybe you shouldn't play!

Also, if you ever have a problem with anything Steam game related.  The first thing you want to do is verify the games.  To do that you go to your Library tab, then right click the game, select Properties, go to the Local Files tab, then Verify Integrity of Game Cache.

I recently had another problem with Black Ops where it kept telling me the game was currently unavailable.  What I did to resolve the issue was backup my games folder, uninstall Steam, erase all registry entries of Steam with Ccleaner.  I then rebooted, reinstalled Steam, and reinstalled my games and everything worked properly.

If you right click on any game in steam its a menu option to backup game files

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Mojo wrote (View Post):

If you right click on any game in steam its a menu option to backup game files

Better, IMO, to do it yourself.