Epic Games Launcher Can't Find My UE4 Installation

I installed UE4 on a external drive so I could use it on another machine, but when I launch Epic Games Launcher it can’t find the engine installation and instead prompts me to download and install it. If I try to redirect it to the directory where it was installed it says “Directory must be empty.”

Does anyone know how to edit config files for EGL so it finds the engine or if I can make EGL find UE4 or something?

Thanks.

my EpicGamesLauncher is in C: and most of my projects are in D: at first the launcher hadn’t identified most of my projects, but it found them when i tried to open it directly, you can open your engine without the epic games launcher, try to run the engine while the launcher is opened, it may identify it the same way it did to my projects, in case you don’t know where is the “.exe” from the editor try this:

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I tried this, and it can’t find the editor. It finds the projects, which it lists as compatible with “Unreal Engine Other” and when I try to open it, it asks for a default program association, even though I’ve set UPROJECT files to open with the editor and they open fine.

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I fixed it by doing the following:

Copy UE_4.14 to the desktop.

Begin a download and then quit EGL as soon as the download speed shows up.

Delete the in progress download from Program Files/Epic Games and replace it with the full version.

Restart EGL and resume download, if it’s done right it’ll list it as installing instead of downloading.

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I had the same problem and did something like TheSuperIndigo that doesn’t require copying the engine folder somewhere else

  • I renamed my current version of UE4 with another name.
  • I started downloading the new UE4 version in the same folder
  • As soon as It started downloading I quit EGL
  • Go in the newly created folder, Cut the only folder called .egstore
  • Delete the empty UE4 folder
  • Rename the old UE4 with the correct name and paste the .egstore folder inside
  • Open EGL
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This worked for me, though I had to move the .egstore folder before I deleted the empty 4.26 folder otherwise I would have deleted the .egstore folder with it.
On the second step I had to wait a little until it said ‘installing’.
When I had done the switch out, I pressed ‘resume’ on the install in EGS and it went quickly from installing to verifying.

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Worked For Me. Thanks Saved My Lot of Time.

it doesnt work for me, i just want to get UE uninstalled. Epic says its not on the Computer, still 140gb space occupied. What a joke

After doing everything step by step it just says that the directory has to be empty to resume the download

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Is this some kind of a joke ?
My launcher stopped recognizing existing engine installations and there is no way to add them by selecting one from a folder, provided solutions anymore.
What kind of programming geniuses work at Epic ?

You have to pause the installation, and then hit the little “X” on the bottom right. After that, it should just have a button that says “resume”, which you can hit after copying the .egstore folder and deleting the placeholder engine folder.