Shit, I really thought that would work.  Well I feel your pain, I was stuck for ten days before I got mine going.  Some of the .exes would still work, not that that helps I suppose if you've deleted your Apps folder.  Made me realise how much I'm at the mercy of Steam thoughand how totally non-existent their support is, I'm definitely using GOG from now on if I can help it.  Well good luck with it, I hope it resolves.

Same thing to me (scanning for a week, then couldn't install), turned out that the problem was I had forced everything through the Telstra server.  I turned firewall off, installed, turned back on, now all good.