[SOLVED] Game won't launch due to "Steam service" issue

[Arno]

Whenever I try to launch the game, I get a dialog that says "Completing installation: 1%" for a little bit, and then this:

---------------------------------------
Installing Steam Service

In order to run Steam properly on this version of Windows, the Steam service component must be installed. The service installation process requires administrator privileges.

[INSTALL SERVICE] [CANCEL]
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Clicking cancel aborts the game launch, and trying to install the service just hangs everything. I actually first noticed this the other day, when the update that allowed you to redeem Sigils of Elohim codes in the public test version came out and I tried to launch the public test version to redeem them...same behaviour.

Normally I'd kind of assume that this is something to do with my Steam installation, but I have a lot of games on my account and these two (the public test version, and now the release version) are the only ones that show the symptoms. For what it's worth, Sigils of Elohim runs fine.

When I first saw this issue, I went online and found instructions about this issue with another game (which also seemed to indicate a Steam issue rather than The Talos Principle), suggesting to run "SteamService.exe /repair", but that didn't fix the problem (although it did run for quite a while and then report success).

Any ideas?

[Arno]

OK, so...just in case anybody else comes here with the same problem; I guess it was Steam after all. One thing I didn't mention in the original post was that I'd opted in to the Steam beta (I'm not talking about the TPP public test, I mean the beta version of Steam itself). It's been a while since I opted in, and everything else was working fine, but I guess I hadn't launched TPP (the public test) since I did it.

In any case, I'm not sure which part(s) of this were strictly necessary, but this is what I did between when it didn't work, and did work:

1) Went into Steam's preferences and opted out of the beta (goodbye, Steam Broadcasting :P). This triggered a restart of the Steam client.

2) When Steam finished restarting and came back up, I exited it manually and pulled up the Task Manager to make sure "steamservice.exe" exited gracefully on its own (it did).

3) Ran "Command Prompt" as Administrator (right-click on your shortcut), cd to Steam's binary directory (in my case, X:\programs\steam\bin) and ran a repair with this command:

.\steamservice.exe /repair

4) Restarted the operating system. My gut feeling is that this was unnecessary, but, I figured what the heck...if I'm doing all this, might as well.

After that, when I launched Steam and TPP, I still got the "Completing installation" window but it went through to completion and eventually launched the game.

[Viper]

Which just means you steam files where corrupted. The original error message said Steam needs to be reinstalled.

[AlenL]

Glad you got it resolved and thanks for writing up how to fix it. Sorry we couldn't respond earlier.

[Arno]

Originally posted by AlenL:

Glad you got it resolved and thanks for writing up how to fix it. Sorry we couldn't respond earlier.

Yeah, no problem; I picked up the "steamservice.exe /repair" idea from another post on these forums ("these" meaning Steam's...was for a different game, one of the Call of Duty ones actually IIRC) but it didn't initially work for me (presumably due to the Steam beta). See, Call of Duty can be useful!

It may be worth noting that -- despite the fact that I'm up and running now -- the service repair operation did not resolve the issue while I was still opted in to the Steam client beta. Obviously it's not outside the realm of possibility that that's simply due to some other, as of yet undiscovered reason, but...you guys may want to consider booting up your own instance of a Steam client, opted in to the current beta, and see if you get the same issue. *shrug*

[AlenL]

Well, I'm always opted into Steam beta. But I didn't have this (or any other) problem. Things like that often happen only on some machines. That's why it's hard to find how to fix them. Good you figured it out.

[Arno]

Oh...well all righty then, never mind. :)

[TheSilentHunter]

Originally posted by Arno:

OK, so...just in case anybody else comes here with the same problem; I guess it was Steam after all. One thing I didn't mention in the original post was that I'd opted in to the Steam beta (I'm not talking about the TPP public test, I mean the beta version of Steam itself). It's been a while since I opted in, and everything else was working fine, but I guess I hadn't launched TPP (the public test) since I did it.

In any case, I'm not sure which part(s) of this were strictly necessary, but this is what I did between when it didn't work, and did work:

1) Went into Steam's preferences and opted out of the beta (goodbye, Steam Broadcasting :P). This triggered a restart of the Steam client.

2) When Steam finished restarting and came back up, I exited it manually and pulled up the Task Manager to make sure "steamservice.exe" exited gracefully on its own (it did).

3) Ran "Command Prompt" as Administrator (right-click on your shortcut), cd to Steam's binary directory (in my case, X:\programs\steam\bin) and ran a repair with this command:

.\steamservice.exe /repair

4) Restarted the operating system. My gut feeling is that this was unnecessary, but, I figured what the heck...if I'm doing all this, might as well.

After that, when I launched Steam and TPP, I still got the "Completing installation" window but it went through to completion and eventually launched the game.

I tried to enter Steam's binary directory and it didn't work, (C:\Program Files(x86)\Steam\bin).
also when I entered the Steam service repair it didnt work either.

[Arno]

If you can't change directory into Steam's binary directory ("...\bin") then the resulting command isn't going to work either. Maybe your bin directory is in a different place? Did you install Steam to the default location?

[TheSilentHunter]

Yes steam is in the defult location but i really have no idea about the other things you noted

[Arno]

Also, just as an extra bit of information; after all of the above, a few days later I really wanted to watch a friend's broadcast so I opted back in to the Steam beta...and now TPP still works (both the full game and the Public Test version). Sooooo, yeah. The only thing that explains the symptoms is that the service rebuild doesn't work while opted in to the beta...but that just doesn't make any sense. Ugh, I hate "well I rebooted and it fixed it" solutions.

[TheSilentHunter]

Do you know of any other ways to complete the installation without this steam service message stopping it??

[Arno]

Originally posted by Brent:

Yes steam is in the defult location but i really have no idea about the other things you noted

Well, the gist is that you need to get to your "bin" directory. As far as I know, it should just be a subdirectory of your main Steam installation directory, wherever that is. I don't know if it's required that you be in that directory when you run the rebuild, but I figured better safe than sorry which is why I did so, and ran the command with ".\" prepended to it. That's why you have to be in that directory for the command (as I showed it) to work.

When you run it, it'll sit there with no output for a while (mine took over half an hour...I have a large library, although I'm not sure if that matters) and then eventually print "rebuild successful" or something along those lines.

[Arno]

Originally posted by Brent:

Do you know of any other ways to complete the installation without this steam service message stopping it??

Nope...my troubleshooting was a mixture of general Web searching and throwing spaghetti at the wall until something stuck.

[TheSilentHunter]

OK can you take me through it step-by-step as i tried your explanation above and some parts didnt work

[TheSilentHunter]

Originally posted by Arno:

Originally posted by Brent:

Do you know of any other ways to complete the installation without this steam service message stopping it??

Nope...my troubleshooting was a mixture of general Web searching and throwing spaghetti at the wall until something stuck. [/quote}
I got to step 2 of your explanation at the top, and after exiting steam i checked the task manager and it showed the Steam service client as stopped.

Is this how it should be?