Virtual Windows XP: "Can't reach download servers"

[olafungabunga]

In order to play some older games I've set up a virtual windows XP (the one that comes with Windows 7 Professional) on my computer and it works great with disk drive installed games. I've also installed a browser and can traverse the internet and download files manually without problems. Downloading, installing and logging into steam also works fine.
However, when I tell Steam to install a game it claims that it "Can't reach download servers". I tried changing to different download servers all over the world to no avail.
It particularly baffles me because I can download steam games on the same computer seamlessly.
Steam is also listed as an exception in the virtual XP's firewall.

Any help to get the game downloads working again would be much appreciated.

[Marty]

Steam has stopped supporting Windows XP, maybe that's why it won't download anything

[olafungabunga]

I've been considering that, but the support isn't supposed to be dropped until January 2019. So it *should* still be working until then.

[Marty]

It can only launch games that are already installed

[olafungabunga]

It does *not* say so in the offical announcement: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1558-AFCM-4577

Sure, new BETA features won't work. But downloading games is among the basic essentials of Steam and should still function.

(If you're talking about another announcement that maybe I didn't see, I'll be glad to have it linked so I can read it too.)

[Majestic 12]

I have the exact same problem on my fully updated Windows XP SP3 machine. I set this machine up to install all those older (Steam) games that won't run well on modern machines but Steam refused to download ANYTHING. I think the server denies access or something like that. I hope someone has a solution ...

[Hatman]

Originally posted by Majestic 12:

I set this machine up to install all those older (Steam) games that won't run well on modern machines

Just out of of curiosity, can you name a few?

[olafungabunga]

Age of Wonders and SimCity 4 Deluxe are two examples of Steam games that don't run (correctly) on Windows 7. (And I imagine the problem is even worse for those with Windows 10.)

[Majestic 12]

Originally posted by Hatman:

Originally posted by Majestic 12:

I set this machine up to install all those older (Steam) games that won't run well on modern machines

Just out of of curiosity, can you name a few?

Quite a few - the problem isn't always that they won't run at all but are prone to crashes or have glitches or even severe slow downs (Desperados for example). Apart from that, some don't support modern resolutions so I prefer to use my rig with old CRT monitor instead for these. Or how about EAX support which doesn't exist in later versions of Windows?

[ThatOneCookie]

Have you found a fix?

[olafungabunga]

Nope, it still doesn't work. I contacted Steam Support and they claimed that Steam would not support virtual machines. Which is bs (I really tried to find a nicer word for it, but I couldn't) because that means that Steam is now selling games that you just can not get to run anymore.

[311Volt]

so if anyone still has a problem with this, the fix is to manually add the content servers' addresses to config/config.vdf in the steam folder by pasting these two lines https://pastebin.com/JDCczPDa after the "cip" entry in that file. these might change one more time before steam officially dies for xp so if you have another machine with an OS supported by steam copy them from there

[olafungabunga]

Oh wow, that did indeed make it work. Thank you very much! :-)

[bright_hawkins]

Hello, olafungabunga, I cannot paste these two lines.When I paste it, the steam will recover the file, how can u do and plz help me step by step. thx!!!

[olafungabunga]

I think the best example I can give is for you to take a close look at the same file in a working steam installation of yours. That should give you a good idea on where and how you should insert the two lines. In my case one of the two entries already existed, so I could easily just override it.

[bright_hawkins]

Hello, olafungabunga, Can u upload the file to mega Cloud In order to I can obtain it? Forgive my English, Thank u