I need someone to help walk me through an internet connection problem.

[Joey Suggs]

Is there someone who can walk me through this in real time?

[Lyndon]

I feel your pain

[Marble]

Your best bet would be to contact your ISP, as they will have knowledge of all the necessary settings and in many cases they will have provided you with the hardware required.

[Joey Suggs]

I have called my ISP, and they fiddled with the channels. Nothing. The problem is with STEAM

[Legendary old man]

Most of the time the issue is with the computer, not Steam.

[Joey Suggs]

When I click on the STEAM app, before it opens it starts to look for updates. About 20 seconds into it, it gives me an error message: "Steam.exe (main exception): To run Steam, you must first connect to the internet."

[Legendary old man]

I would try this first.
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3134-TIAL-4638

[Legendary old man]

BTW, one thread is enough. No need to start multiple threads about the same issue. It is just going to make things more complicated.

[NiVe88]

aaawww :3

[Joey Suggs]

facedown. Thanks. The instructions say to delete all files in the steam folder except the userdata and steam app. There are folders called bin and public. Should I delete them?

[Joey Suggs]

I did do the deletions and then rebooted. Still have the same problem.

[Joey Suggs]

I dont know how to look in my router for blocks. It is a centurylink router and has no manual.

[Joey Suggs]

Believe me, I have been searching for hours.

[Marble]

Also run this test to make sure none of the required ports for Steam are blocked:
http://www.firebind.com/tests/steam/

If the test fails, then either your router is blocking traffic on those ports, or your ISP is.

If your ISP provided the router, they can configure all of this for you, or at the very least talk you through it over the phone.

[Joey Suggs]

Thanks, Canti.

Here are my results:

TCP Result: FAILURE
Testing TCP Port: done
TCP Passed:
TCP Failed: 27014-27050

UDP Result: FAILURE
Testing UDP Port: done
UDP Passed:
UDP Failed: 1500,3005,3101,3478,4379-4380,27000-27030,28960

No wonder I'm having troubles. How many ports do I need to have open? Sorry for stupid questions.

[Legendary old man]

It is unlikely your router is blocking those outbound ports. Someone would have to change the default settings on purpose to do that. It is much more likely that you have a firewall or some kind of network monitor or traffic shaper or a rogue security program on your computer.

I have 3 different kinds of gateways from Centurylink and they have all worked with Steam out of the box.