MY steam games directory only has installscript.vdf inside it

[Caval]

Whenever I try to install a game it gets to 99% and never finishes updating, its just stuck. When I look inside the game's directory, the only file located inside is the "installscript.vdf". Whats the problem?

[ReBoot]

Define "never". How long have you been waiting?

[Caval]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Define "never". How long have you been waiting?

I left CS:GO (one of the games with this issue) to download overnight.

[ReBoot]

Hm. That would mean that Steam can't move the files from the download directory to the proper game directory.
Rule out the following possible causes:
1. A third party program messing with Steam (Norton, in example, is notorious)
2. Disk defects

[Caval]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Hm. That would mean that Steam can't move the files from the download directory to the proper game directory.
Rule out the following possible causes:
1. A third party program messing with Steam (Norton, in example, is notorious)
2. Disk defects

One thing I forgot to mention, before I left for school, I was able to install the game 'receiver' and really big Sky, two games I had never installed before. I then tried to install castle crasher as a test, but it still wouldn't install and only gave me the Installscript.vdf. Why would those two games install perfectly, but not castle crashers?

I recently ran a disk defragment but I've been having bsods on startup recently (waiting to reinstall Windows on an ssd when I get one). I'll run chkdsk after I get home from school.

[ReBoot]

ORLY? What do those BSDOs say?

[Kappa]

;l;

[Caval]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

ORLY? What do those BSDOs say?

Usually SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION or NTFS.Sys. I asked on the sevenforums a while ago asking about it and i ran my pc through a lot of different tests like memtest86+ and driver verifier. The tests told me nothing was wrong with my pc, but i was still getting bsods (only on startup, the pc would blue screen, restart and then everything would be fine with no bsods occurring after that) . The person on sevenforums told me i should probably just do a clean install of Windows 7

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Cav:

Originally posted by ReBoot:

ORLY? What do those BSDOs say?

Usually SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION or NTFS.Sys. I asked on the sevenforums a while ago asking about it and i ran my pc through a lot of different tests like memtest86+ and driver verifier. The tests told me nothing was wrong with my pc, but i was still getting bsods (only on startup, the pc would blue screen, restart and then everything would be fine with no bsods occurring after that) . The person on sevenforums told me i should probably just do a clean install of Windows 7

Those sort of errors seem to be saying that there's errors or issues with your disk drive.

That would certainly explain why you're having download issues, and why you can download certain games and not others - note that the ones you downloaded are small compared to what you can't download.

That might suggest some buggered sectors.

[Caval]

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Originally posted by Cav:

Usually SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION or NTFS.Sys. I asked on the sevenforums a while ago asking about it and i ran my pc through a lot of different tests like memtest86+ and driver verifier. The tests told me nothing was wrong with my pc, but i was still getting bsods (only on startup, the pc would blue screen, restart and then everything would be fine with no bsods occurring after that) . The person on sevenforums told me i should probably just do a clean install of Windows 7

Those sort of errors seem to be saying that there's errors or issues with your disk drive.

That would certainly explain why you're having download issues, and why you can download certain games and not others - note that the ones you downloaded are small compared to what you can't download.

That might suggest some buggered sectors.

How should i go about fixing it? Is there a way to repair windows without deleting all my files?

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Cav:

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Those sort of errors seem to be saying that there's errors or issues with your disk drive.

That would certainly explain why you're having download issues, and why you can download certain games and not others - note that the ones you downloaded are small compared to what you can't download.

That might suggest some buggered sectors.

How should i go about fixing it? Is there a way to repair windows without deleting all my files?

You can't, basically. If your disk drive is having such serious issues, it is ONLY ever going to worsen and probably quickly.

All you can do is go to your drive manufacturer's website and download one of their disk checking utilities - it SHOULD be able to check and then mark the bad sectors so you can at least use SOME of your disk drive for now.

Of course, if it's the drive controller or something else, then it might even have troubles with this.

But give that a go - your best bet is to get any data on there that's important backed up ASAP.

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by Cav:

Originally posted by ReBoot:

ORLY? What do those BSDOs say?

Usually SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION or NTFS.Sys

Looks like serious disk errors.

[Caval]

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Originally posted by Cav:

How should i go about fixing it? Is there a way to repair windows without deleting all my files?

You can't, basically. If your disk drive is having such serious issues, it is ONLY ever going to worsen and probably quickly.

All you can do is go to your drive manufacturer's website and download one of their disk checking utilities - it SHOULD be able to check and then mark the bad sectors so you can at least use SOME of your disk drive for now.

Of course, if it's the drive controller or something else, then it might even have troubles with this.

But give that a go - your best bet is to get any data on there that's important backed up ASAP.

When i asked about this issue on sevenforums, i was told to download western digitals hard drive checking software. My drive passed both tests when i ran it. Ill try again though

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Cav:

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

You can't, basically. If your disk drive is having such serious issues, it is ONLY ever going to worsen and probably quickly.

All you can do is go to your drive manufacturer's website and download one of their disk checking utilities - it SHOULD be able to check and then mark the bad sectors so you can at least use SOME of your disk drive for now.

Of course, if it's the drive controller or something else, then it might even have troubles with this.

But give that a go - your best bet is to get any data on there that's important backed up ASAP.

When i asked about this issue on sevenforums, i was told to download western digitals hard drive checking software. My drive passed both tests when i ran it. Ill try again though

Western Digital's utility is probably only useful if your drive IS WD. This is why I told you to go to your drive manufacturer's website.

If it IS WD, then try and look a little more to see if there's a utility that's a bit more intensive.

[Caval]

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Originally posted by Cav:

When i asked about this issue on sevenforums, i was told to download western digitals hard drive checking software. My drive passed both tests when i ran it. Ill try again though

Western Digital's utility is probably only useful if your drive IS WD. This is why I told you to go to your drive manufacturer's website.

If it IS WD, then try and look a little more to see if there's a utility that's a bit more intensive.

My drive is western digital but i will try again when i get home. Also another thing i forgot to mention. This issue is ONLY happening on steam. Any games or programs i download off the Internet or on Origin or GOG work fine. Im pretty confident that my bsods are driver related (im just not sure wich and i dont want to delete anything and mess something up) as my hard drive hasnt really messed up before. But i will try testing again just to be safe

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Cav:

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Western Digital's utility is probably only useful if your drive IS WD. This is why I told you to go to your drive manufacturer's website.

If it IS WD, then try and look a little more to see if there's a utility that's a bit more intensive.

My drive is western digital but i will try again when i get home. Also another thing i forgot to mention. This issue is ONLY happening on steam. Any games or programs i download off the Internet or on Origin or GOG work fine. Im pretty confident that my bsods are driver related (im just not sure wich and i dont want to delete anything and mess something up) as my hard drive hasnt really messed up before. But i will try testing again just to be safe

I'm afraid that's HIGHLY unlikely.

The BSOD errors are DIRECTLY related to your hard drive. That's how we both spotted it straight away. If it were driver related, you wouldn't likely have such errors.

Do note that testing utilities aren't exact either. Each hard drive has it's OWN "in-built" utilities to mark duff sectors as they're detected, as ALL hard drives are built with faults (none are perfect).

So, it's entirely likely that as each sector fails on your hard drive, it gets marked. Then when you run a check, it report nothing untoward. This is why I asked if you could find an INTENSIVE scanner, which goes into great detail.

It's also incredibly likely for you to THINK the issue is down to Steam alone, for the simple reason Steam was most likely installed with it's games at that time on a certain area of the disk. Likewise Origin, etc. If those sectors and those surrounding for Origin are OK, they wouldn't cause any issue.

However, depending on how much space there is on the drive, etc, it could easily be that the games you're trying to install on Steam are being installed (in part or full) on dodgy sectors. That's often how it goes. I realise I probably haven't explained this very well, though.

This is why I suggested that those games you succesfully installed were small and the ones you couldn't were larger - this would back that hypothesis up.

So, I'm afraid there seems to be a fair amount of evidence for hard drive failure, and nothing I can see for anything else.


EDIT: Also to add, those BSODs - NTFS is the disk filing system, and the other is an OS file that should obviously NOT be deleted or disappeared shows as not working.