Every Steam Support "Troubleshoot" makes things worse - please help!

[AntonTheLost]

A week ago, everything worked fine. Upon trying to install a game, I continued getting errors, and every single step following troubleshooting guidelines has make things *worse*.

My hard drive tests clean for failures, there's no Malware, plenty of free space, Windows7(64), top of the line laptop, and I've tried doing all of this with rebooting at every step, verifying game cache, repairing Steam install, and in safe mode as well as as "administrator"; all services and security are set to "allow", and other non-steam programs install and run normally. Strangely, my hard-drive seems to be stuck on "read-only". :(

So this is where things went steadily downhill at every step, and I've been careful to only attempt Steam Support or Forum Moderator solutions: I went to install "Forced", and at 100% complete, it insisted it needed an "update" now. Attempting to run the update gave me a "Disk Write Error"; I thought that was odd, so I uninstalled the game and upon attempting to re-install, got a "Not enough disk space" error only part-way through the install. At this point I noticed the entire Steam folder is "read-only", and I can't seem to change that without it resetting when I close the properties window. At this point I tried playing other games, including re-installing them, and got "Unknown Error" when I tried to play. At this point, I'm basically freaking out, because Steam has rebelled against me. It begins insisting it needs to update and restart *every single time it loads*; thinking perhaps STEAM has become the issue rather than the games, I decided to force Steam to update by deleting everything but Steam.exe and Steamapps, putting my userdata onto the desktop for recovery (at someone's suggestion I also tried it with JUST the Steam.exe). When I ran Steam as such, as support suggests, to force an update, I get a "Failed to load Steam.dll" error and it stops.

Ok, at this point I'm basically livid, there's no explanation for this, and my only resort is to consider either re-installing windows, which isn't a guarantee, or chargeback my recent purchases, since due to a lack of support, I'm being denied access to them, as I'm assuming there's some serious issue with Steam itself at this point. I fully uninstall Steam (saving the userdata and Steamapps on desktop), and I get the .msi to run for re-install, and it gets through "installing" just fine, only to freeze *every time* at 27% with a "Fatal Error: Unable to load steamtmp.exe"; even though that file is *in* the directory. Workarounds on the forums included simply launching Steamnew.exe specifically, or updating beyond the install in safe mode, but, nothing else did anything; this "updates" the 101,000k files, but doesn't bring back up the updating bar. I was able to install it "successfully" in safe mode, and re-installed several games to see if I could get it to work.

Now back on my normal user account, I can get Steam to load, and talk to friends, browse games and the like, but I get an "Unknown Error" issue when trying to run anything. They'll "install", but won't run, including games that I played only a few days ago without issue.

Essentially, nothing in any forum, or the support troubleshooting, has helped - it has made it step-by-step worse, until I essentially don't have a working copy of Steam.

I really hope someone has some kind of suggestion - at this point, I've tried every single thing suggested for the errors I'm having, and it's looking like I may need to consider re-installing Windows entirely, which is a really crappy "solution". Please, HELP!

[CrystalRoff]

I had this problem simular a little ways back.I defragmented my drive , re-verified install location to new external drive and then worked fine. im guessing since i defraged it , it knew how to install the games in the right path instead of partly installing files and leaving some out for the verify cashe to find and install. i hope this helps as i was livid at the point too. i have 2 1terrabite drives so im good on space, but i did get the" unable to install disk space full"

[AntonTheLost]

I run a disk defrag weekly. :\ Thanks though. At this point, I'm having trouble merely getting Steam re-installed, let alone when it does "install", running games in it.

[CrystalRoff]

have you tried a external hdd and making read, writable. then make a install path for steam games there . thats what i do now, kinda have to.I do so hope you will find the solution , i can only think of what i wnet through and multiply that a few dozens of times.

[AntonTheLost]

I don't have access to an external HD, and I've only seen tons *more* hassle with that anyway. Would a partition work? I'm kinda out of options, I've tried every workaround I can find, and the longer the 5-10 day average for the first auto-response e-mail takes, the more actually angry I'm becoming. Having no telephone support for a program that ITSELF is the cause of being unable to play a bunch of games I paid for is, at best, infuriating, and at worst, worth boycotting. It's especially frustrating because I know that the first few e-mails won't even be helpful, and it's going to take *forever* trying to fix this by e-mail. "Have you tried this thing you already told me you tried? Try it again". That there's no active support is enough to seriously consider both putting a chargeback on my recent purchases if they can't provide help.

[CrystalRoff]

partician is ecentually the same thing as im doing but yeh i think it would work. wouldnt hurt to try at this point in your time anyways.

[AntonTheLost]

Fair enough. I mean, at this point, the freakin' Steam install doesn't even have an icon, and while I can start it and talk to my friends, that's it. :p

[AntonTheLost]

lvlrgreen™님이 먼저 게시:

partician is ecentually the same thing as im doing but yeh i think it would work. wouldnt hurt to try at this point in your time anyways.

It didn't hurt at all. It "fixed" it! Thank you for the suggestion, it's the only one I hadn't seen.

Obviously there's something wrong on my main drive on some level, but at least I can play Terraria during Halloween and check out FORCED> Thanks buddy :D

[CrystalRoff]

yay. no problem man , glad i helped. makes me feel better cause i was in the same boat as you bro. have fun gaming

[AntonTheLost]

Muppet among Puppets님이 먼저 게시:

I would have tested another hard drive when data "fails".
As partitioning solved the problem, keep an eye on your hard drive..... Maybe run a tool that shows returning write errors and such.

No other program was returning that kind of error, I even installed another game independently of steam to be sure. :p None of the tools, both cmd diagnostics nor diskcheck programs returned any errors or problems, no bad sectors, nothing. The issues went well beyond disk write errors to steam in general just not wanting to install itself - after I put in on the other drive, it fixed itself, so I think there was something faulty with STEAM. I will keep a close eye, but I don't think I should have any problem, generally hard drives don't fail at a year and a half.

[NL]

Charge back your purchases because YOUR computer is messed up. Makes sense.

[AntonTheLost]

NL님이 먼저 게시:

Charge back your purchases because YOUR computer is messed up. Makes sense.

I thought this had to do with steam, and not my specific computer. There was an update, then everything stopped working. I have the right to choose to not continue if they can't provide assistance, and charge back my unused purchase. :p There are specific qualifiers for it not to be "friendly fraud", but if I spend money, then am wholly unable to use the product, and they were to refuse a refund, yeah, a chargeback would ensue. That's an end-game result, and I spoke a little out of frustration without *qualifying* my statement. Sorry for the confusion.

[NL]

AntonTheLost님이 먼저 게시:

I have the right to choose to not continue if they can't provide assistance, and charge back my unused purchase. :p There are specific qualifiers for it not to be "friendly fraud", but if I spend money, then am wholly unable to use the product, and they were to refuse a refund, yeah, a chargeback would ensue. That's an end-game result, and I spoke a little out of frustration without *qualifying* my statement. Sorry for the confusion.

First off, they do not provide refunds for games. Second off Steam all but told you what the problem was with the error message. Why would you think Steam is broken when 50 Million people use it? You spent money on a game, sure but the PC was obviously the issue.

BTW, if you do a chargeback you will find your entire Steam account either permanently suspended or have all buying and trading rights revoked for life.

I am not sure what brand of hard drive you have but most manufacturers have programs to test their hard drives. I suggest you download the proper program and test your drive before your computer will start up and you loose everything on it. I would run chkdsk /p also.

This is like buying gas, having your car break down so you want a refund on the gas.

[GatoGordo]

which isn't a guarantee, or chargeback my recent purchases, since due to a lack of support, I'm being denied access to them, as I'm assuming there's some serious issue with Steam itself at this point.

[NL]

GW.L7PCAvaricia님이 먼저 게시:

which isn't a guarantee, or chargeback my recent purchases, since due to a lack of support, I'm being denied access to them, as I'm assuming there's some serious issue with Steam itself at this point.

Your assumption would be wrong when 50 million other people are using it without a problem. You guys are acting like Valve has some responsibility to fix your computer. That is why they have Computer Repair stores. Most of the games on Steam are not even made by Valve and they have zero responsibility to fix those games either. That would be up to the publisher that made the actual game. Do you expect Walmart to fix your computer if you buy a game there and it won't run?

[AntonTheLost]

I'm glad you feel the need to inform me more about what happens when you do chargebacks, but I know everything you're saying already, and am well aware of how chargebacks work and Steam policy, which I hoped my comment about understanding "friendly fraud" would have enlightened you to. If it couldn't be fixed, then what's the point in not having that money? The errors I got were all over the board, and Steam-specific, if I was having disk write errors and lack of space on a perfectly fine otherwise drive, which installs and runs other programs fine, then it's *not* the error being returned correctly, because, ya know, bugs happen; pretty much every step of the way had an error for no understandable reason, but *everything else* on my computer worked fine. If you read my post in the first place, you'd know I've already run all system diagnostics possible both on-board and including using a 3rd part program (crystaldisk).

And your analogy sucks, because I'm buying the car when I buy a game, not the gas, which is the third party (steam) to make the second party I want to work able to do so (the game), and if the gas messes up my car or I'm unable to use my car because of it, yeah, there's an issue.