Steam Help Please

[NyteOwl]

I admit to not being a gaming guru but I'm no newcomer either. I also believe that products should work and that the company that makes them is ultimately responsible for them.

Now that the mini-rant is done ... I hope someone can help.

I have a brand new purchased copy of FEAR 3 I would liek to install and play. I had a bit of problems with Steam on FEAR2 but it was after I got things installed and more along the lines of huge downloads etc.

Well I bought this copy after carefully examining and finding NO requirement for Steam anywhere on it's packaging so i though great! I celebrated too soon.

I cannot login to Steam at all, and so cannot even install the game. I have tried everything:

firewall disabled
proxy disabled
antivirus uninstalled
router set to pass through all ports both directions
all unnecessary background tasks disabled
WMI completely upgrade/repaired per the Microsoft instructions
Steam completely uninstalled and reinstalled

Nothing works. I start the Steam clinet, the login dialog pops up, I enter my password and nothing - there is network activity and if I check logs the client seems to be exchanging handshaking with the site but a few seconds later TaskManager says Steam is "Not responding".

If I just let it sit, about 30-40 minutes later another Steam dialog will appears saying it "Cannot connect to Steam".

I can even have it work right for the "recover account" option, and if I deliberately enter a wrong password it knows and tells me right away.

After going through the usual troubleshooting and knowledgebase stuff with tech support, their suggestion was to "contact Microsoft" as it must eb an OS problem.

Well I doubt M$ is likely to provide tech support for another companies product, and XP is now in the paid support window in any case. Steam is the only app I have trouble making run. I ahven't sued it in a while but it recognizes my account, username and password just fine.

Can anyone offer any help at all? Or do I try and find a buyer for a liek new unused copy of FEAR 3 :(

[On2wheels]

If you've activated FEAR3 on your steam account, it's yours forever now.

besides that, I think getting basic Steam fuctionality is priority, you can try this:

quitting steam, delete clientrtegistry.blob from the main steam folder, and restart steam. see if that fixes anything. but if steam cant connect, I doubt it's a game-specific prioblem.

[NSdeadly1]

Have you used Steam recently for any other games? I only say this because it happened to a friend of mine, are you sure that your account hasn't been hacked/banned? One of my friends couldn't log into Steam and when he contacted them(several times) they said that his account had been banned for suspicious activity. Come to find out it had been one of the accounts that had gotten hacked when the Steam servers were hacked. Just sayin you might want to look into this.

[Dr_BenD_over]

If you ever had any port forwarding for Steam on your router, disable it and make sure UPnP is enabled. And totally ignore their help pages on the subject, they are way out-of-date.

[NyteOwl]

If you've activated FEAR3 on your steam account, it's yours forever now.

besides that, I think getting basic Steam fuctionality is priority, you can try this:

quitting steam, delete clientrtegistry.blob from the main steam folder, and restart steam. see if that fixes anything. but if steam cant connect, I doubt it's a game-specific prioblem.

No it's not activated. I can't get that far. As I said I can't log into Steam. I tried all those - total reinstall of the client to no effect.

Have you used Steam recently for any other games? I only say this because it happened to a friend of mine, are you sure that your account hasn't been hacked/banned? One of my friends couldn't log into Steam and when he contacted them(several times) they said that his account had been banned for suspicious activity. Come to find out it had been one of the accounts that had gotten hacked when the Steam servers were hacked. Just sayin you might want to look into this.

I haven't used Steam for some time actually but, the system recognizes the account, will send my password if I tell it I forgot. Support has indicated nothing wrong with the account (they blame Windows).

If you ever had any port forwarding for Steam on your router, disable it and make sure UPnP is enabled. And totally ignore their help pages on the subject, they are way out-of-date.

No special port forwarding, and the router does not support UPnP.

[Kommie986]

Try logging on via the Steam website.
https://steamcommunity.com/
If you can, it means something is wrong with the client. Best try is to make a post in Steam forums.

[NyteOwl]

I can log into the Steam community page (though it continues to require I enter a code it sends via e-mail to do so), I can log into support and the forums, just not via the client (which is needed to install/run the game) :(

[Chromey]

sorry i cant help But after almost 10 years of no problems, a few months ago I had a power outage, In-turn shut down steam early error was the next thing i see when i restart.

I Un installed2 times, Still didnt work, I kept getting a error saying "Steam was installed on a new system".


All said and done, Not thinking it even could happen, The issue was a bad Sata cable to the drive i had it installed on.

So that leads to this question, Is steam installed on your OS drive or a storage drive?

[Shadowmeph]

Ok so you cannot log into steam at all? Can you Ping steam? are you using a Router ? also what type of firewall . oh and one last thing what about things like AntiVirus and Antimalware software . when ever you install things like Games they should be off so that they don't block and then don't tell you they blocked a vital piece of the game to make it run.

hwere is a link to the ports that Steam needs open to run it.
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_...8571-GLVN-8711

[NyteOwl]

So that leads to this question, Is steam installed on your OS drive or a storage drive?

OS drive. My windows install is on a 500GB RAID 1 array. The cleint can obviously talk to the servers since it can verify if I use a wrong password, mail me a lost password, update itself ... just won't logon anymore.

Ok so you cannot log into steam at all? Can you Ping steam? are you using a Router ? also what type of firewall . oh and one last thing what about things like AntiVirus and Antimalware software . when ever you install things like Games they should be off so that they don't block and then don't tell you they blocked a vital piece of the game to make it run.

As I said previously (please see above), I'm aware of all that and have turned off and or removed just about everything but the bare OS. I can ping Steam fine. I use a router and it was set to pass everything through in both directions.