Installing plugins on a previously downloaded version of Unreal Engine

After reinstalling Windows and then installing EGS, I need to restore the installed engine in EGS. It would seem that a simple option so that when selecting the installation folder does not work (the directory must be empty). The method with starting the download and replacing the folder does not work. UnrealVersionSelector only adds an association with the project files. Yes, I understand that loading the engine again may not take much time, but it is not always possible to download such a volume of data, not to mention the fact that … Why do I need to download again what I already have? All the solutions I found do not work, since I just need to make EGS see the installed Unreal Engine?