"Installing Steam Service"

[D2Kvirus]

When launching Steam today, I was greeted with a pop-up reading "In order to run Steam properly in this version of Windows, the Steam service component must be installed. The service installation process requires administrative privileges" with the options of installing or cancelling. If I click cancel I can log into Steam regardless, but the pop-up comes back when I log out of Steam.

A quick search on Google indicates that it is not a rare problem and may be because I have Spybot Search & Destroy installed and it's identified a Steam update as spyware - so if this is the case what do I do to stop this happenening and, on the other hand, if this is not the case what steps should I take?

[Nickolaus]

Antiviruses will sometimes give off false positives. I can assume from your post that your antivirus was triggered by it. What you can do is report it to whoever makes your antivirus and see if they can do anything to white list it from appearing again. I don't know who you are, so I am not aware of how tech savvy you are when it comes to computers. You may want to do a thorough scan on your machine. (Running an anti-malware tool, anti-virus tool, etc.) That would just eliminate any factors that you have some sort of malicious malware on your machine.

Back on the subject, you should be able to somewhere in the settings of your antivirus give Steam an exception. If that doesn't work, running Safe Mode with Networking and running Steam as an administrator would possibly fix the issues as well. You could also consider trying the steps below as well.

________

Please try the following below. The below will do a full refresh on your Steam library:

Windows XP/Vista/7/8

• Completely exit the Steam client.
  
• Open the run dialogue by pressing windows key + r (you can also navigate here from the start menu by typing run).
  
• Type steam://flushconfig then press enter. (If asked to allow this website to open a program, please click Allow or OK).
  
• Restart your computer.
  
• Now, launch Steam directly from the installation folder, not from a pre-existing shortcut (~C:\program files (x86)\Steam).
  
• The Steam application will either appear as Steam or Steam.exe depending on whether your settings show file extensions.

Mac OSX

• Completely exit the Steam client.
  
• Open Safari and type steam://flushconfig then press enter
  
• Restart your computer.
  
• Launch Steam and re-test the issue.

Linux

• Open Terminal
  
• Type steam --reset
  
• You will see the following: Installing bootstrap /home/[username]/.steam/steam/bootstrap.tar.xz
  
• Reset complete!
  
• Restart your computer.
  
• This should remove and download new Steam files for your Steam client.
  
• Launch Steam and re-test the issue.

[D2Kvirus]

Okay, so far I have...
* Uninstalled Spybot Search & Destroy
* Run a scan with Malwarebites Anti-Malware (which came up clean)
* Followed the instructions for Windows 7/Vista

When booting Steam from the installation folder, the same pop-up came up prior to the login screen - although I should add that, when logging in, Steam did update.

[KT 💣KλBoƠM ♡ ᓚᘏᗢ]

I have done the steam://flushconfig and all and I just cannot run Steam again. It just get that dreaded error and it hangs when I hit update... So I guess I just cannot play any of my steam games anymore ... It has been months now ... I am sad but .. waht else can I do???

For some reason I had to make a new forum account and support account (only my community page login still worked).