Does Valve even care?

[worst gangster police state]

Tons of people had their Steam access completely destroyed after the Feb 14th update. I and most others have submitted support tickets after exhausting all the troubleshooting guides from Valve and extra tips from members here. Yet today I finally get a response to my support ticket and they ask me to do a troubleshooting process I had already done first thing (and even stated this in my support ticket).

We never see Valve posting responses on these boards. The volunteer mods might chime in to tell you not to use caps lock or to behave, but no substance is discussed. I and others have several hundred dollars of purchased games within these accounts and yet when there's a severe problem like this, Valve says without saying: "too bad". If people are lucky, some other poor soul has figured out a solution and bothers to post it. Note that it isn't Valve who helps --it's other end-users. But what happens in this case where the problem is so severe, no one knows the solution? Think of all the people who don't speak up; who don't want to or know how to try and find help.

Does Valve even care? It seems like they do not.

[dirrtymartini]

To be fair, these are USER forums where we try to help each other. Support from Valve is handled through Steam Support. We do get a random Valve employee posting on full moons.

I've seen some of those same reports of major problems. Something is / was seriously broken recently. That part is frustrating. I hear you. I've been using the Steam for Linux client over the last week or so and am dreading the return to Windows even more than usual.

Do you want to try to work the issue with your fellow users in this thread? Or did you just need to vent? ;)

[WitChKinG]

i had the same or similar difficulties and was able to fix it myself. heres what. go to the steam homepage. select "download steam client" on the top right in green. when the process selection page comes up with the 2 options to "repair" or "uninstall steam"... uninstall that ♥♥♥♥. then re-download steam and all your games. you will have to sign in. you will have to confirm via your email that steam has on record for you so cross your fingers you haz access to it. if not youre pretty much sol. sorry but thats real truth and i'm 100% sure this method works. at least it did for me. try. and good luck.

[worst gangster police state]

If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears. Running it in Windows 7 64 bit. I have tried the following:

delete everything but steam.exe and steamapps
move steamapps elsewhere and try reinstalling steam
disable antivirus and try it all again
minidumps don't process a dump file
manually clear registry and try installing steam to a separate directory
install as administrator (I have admin privileges on this account, but manually selection run as admin)
cannot install it in safemode
cannot run it in safemode. It simply crashes as before.
copy a working steam directory from another w7 64 bit machine to my machine and tried launching the steam.exe within (resulted in no different behavior)

[worst gangster police state]

İlk olarak dgl.fodderbot tarafından gönderildi:

i had the same or similar difficulties and was able to fix it myself. heres what. go to the steam homepage. select "download steam client" on the top right in green. when the process selection page comes up with the 2 options to "repair" or "uninstall steam"... uninstall that ♥♥♥♥. then re-download steam and all your games. you will have to sign in. you will have to confirm via your email that steam has on record for you so cross your fingers you haz access to it. if not youre pretty much sol. sorry but thats real truth and i'm 100% sure this method works. at least it did for me. try. and good luck.

I have, on the best day, an 800 kbps internet connection. I'm in a very rural area of the midwest. A 3G connection through Sprint is the only viable option versus dialup. With a current game folder of around 170 gb, I'd have had a couple haircuts by the time it finished and I'd be wearing shorts. I have transferred my entire steamapps folder to a different drive to ensure I do not have to re-download everything.

I completely uninstalled steam, manually cleared the registry of all things valve and steam and any games related, rebooted without any anti virus running (MSE), and tried reinstalling. It will download the 110mb update, extract and install, and once it attempts to restart Steam to launch for the first time, it crashes and steamerrorreporter.exe begins.

and yes, I even tried getting a fresh copy of the steam install from the homepage when I tried it all over

[WitChKinG]

no offense pbr but you have a bunch happening on your machine. i apologize for your living situation and geographical woes, believe me i been there, but i think bruce lee put it best when he said "simply to simplify". solution, take your drive to someone in an area that has a whipass connection at 5094584304348923kbps and download there, otherwise, there really isnt much more you could do apart from moving out of bfe. just sayin.

[WitChKinG]

oh and coincidentally i am at 11% of a full css download at a ripping 140kbps with a 2.5 download time so yanno...

[worst gangster police state]

But I shouldn't have to re-download any games. I should be able to do a fresh install and that's what I've tried. It simply doesn't work.