Unable to locate a running instance of Steam

[elevenfourteen]

there was one thread about this - cannot find it anymore.

so... i payed for another game that is not even playable... getting this error again and again. there seems to be no fix right? i googled and all the hints like reinstalling steam with all its apps didn't work for me. anyone else getting this?

http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/8323/arma3error.png

thanks for help...

[elevenfourteen]

so? nobody having that error?

[Rka]

How are you trying to start this with the arma3.exe?

[Rka]

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?148255-Arma-3-Steam-Crash

[elevenfourteen]

yeah. i have seen this. and i did this. but i postet this in my topic already...

[Cave Johnson]

Postat inițial de elevenfourteen:

there was one thread about this - cannot find it anymore.

so... i payed for another game that is not even playable... getting this error again and again. there seems to be no fix right? i googled and all the hints like reinstalling steam with all its apps didn't work for me. anyone else getting this?

http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/8323/arma3error.png

thanks for help...

I had that error yesterday. But it was with Gary mod not Arma 3. i restarted steam and validating cache files fixed it.

[elevenfourteen]

hi. thanks for that. i validated several times. no errors... =(

[Donoghu]

Had that problem too, but whenever I was trying to launch Steam itself and what I did to fix it was :
- Make a backup of the SteamApps/Common folder on either an external HDD or in another folder of your PC. (Since it might be heavy, it's up to you)
- Uninstall Steam.
- Delete the Steam folder in its integrity. (Even once uninstalled, a folder with some properties is still there.
- Reinstall Steam.

Now whenever you want to reinstall a game, start the installation throught steam. Once it's around 1%, pause the download, quit&close Steam, go to the newly created folder of the game and copy/paste the folder from the inside copied "Common" folder you made as a backup earlier. Launch Steam again. While it doesn't work with every game, some game will resume the download where the current file in the folder are (as it check the integrity before resuming the download) and will only have 1-15% more to download instead of the remaining 99%. (The different file are those related to how steam manage its files. There's some kind of security encryption on somefile that use an unique key produced by the Steam Client installation. Reinstalling Steam gives another "key" to the client.)
I will write it again... you must launch the installation from steam before copy/pasting the files from the backup. Then you must QUIT/CLOSE/EXIT Steam as it won't verify the integrity of the download otherwise. If you don't, the copy/pasted files will be deleted as Steam won't recognise the files (as it isn't registered in the Steam local client file) and once you launch the installation, it will delete the current game files inside the "SteamApps/Common" folder.

This is not a 100% safe way and might not work for some, but it worked for me.
Also, the backup I mentionned up there doesn't seem to work with valve/steam games located in the " SteamApps/*Account* " folder.

[elevenfourteen]

so... well i don't know. i think it was easier to deinstall everything and delete the files that were left on the hdd manually and begin from zero with steam. so did i. what does your way change? had no success with mine.