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Store:Steam

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Revision as of 16:27, 7 March 2012 by NatredX (talk | contribs)

Steam is a digital distribution platform launched by Valve Corporation in 2003.


System Specifications
Category Minimum
OS Windows XP, Vista, 7, or Intel Mac, OS X version Leopard 10.5.8, Snow Leopard 10.6.3, or later.
Processor 1 GHz
Memory 512 MB
Hard Drive 1 GB

Information

First Time Setup

When launching a freshly installed game on Steam for the first time the game will normally initiate "First Time Setup", installing DirectX, Visual Studio redistributable and .NET libraries. While you may be running the latest and greatest versions of these programs, especially if you're a Windows 7 gamer, the individual games may still require specific versions of APIs like D3D10. More information on this can be found on this Steam forum post. Occasionally after carrying out first time setup you may find the root of your hard drive filled with a dozen or so "vcredist" files, these can be safely removed as they're temporary files created as part of the install and are meant to be cleaned up after the install is complete.

Work Arounds

Steam game not starting

Sometimes a game on steam may not start up, so you may be able to get it working by: 

Library > [Game] > Right click > Properties > Local files > Verify Integrity of Game Cache

It can take over 10 minutes to detect the bad files and replace them

Steam gets stuck on update

Steam updates sometimes get stuck at a certain amount of percent, however, you can usually fix it by doing this:

OS:

  • Windows 32Bit: 
     'C:\>Program Files>Steam and delete "clientregistry.blob
  • Windows 64Bit: 
    'C:\>Program Files (x86)>Steam and delete "clientregistry.blob'
  • Mac: 
     ~/Library/Application\ Support/Steam/ClientRegistry.blob

This will delete your saved password for steam, and force it to re-download the Steam client update. This method usually always fix other problems with Steam, so it is usually a good idea to delete this whenever steam encounters an error.

When installing a game: "missing configuration" error message

The exact cause of this error is unknown. However, the solution is to simply walk away from your computer for a while, and try again when Steam is not under heavy load.Note: this may take several hours.

Steam will not launch at all

If Steam will not launch on a Windows 7 system (64 bit) you can try this trick. Delete the appcache directory found here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\appcache Restart steam it will then re-download and launch successfully.

Saving Steam games for re-install

If you wish to re-install steam, or transfer your game data to a new hard drive, simply move the ~/Steam/steamapps/ folder to a new destination. Depending on the size of the folder it may take some time. Then, on the new system, install Steam and let it run once. Simply replace your temporary steamapps with the ~newarea/Steam/steamapps/ folder. Restart Steam and it will recognize the files. This saves having to redownload every game when you move to a new system.

Offline Mode

For some reason, if your internet connection is limited (i.e. if ports required for Steam to run are closed), Steam will not start in offline mode and will return the following error:

Could not connect to steam network. This could be due to a problem with your internet connection, or with the Steam network. Please visit www.steampowered.com for more info.

Solutions:

  1. Find a proper network. Open Steam whilst internet connection is working.
  2. Click "Steam" > Go Offline. Steam should now restart.
  • Steam offline mode should now work even with limited connection.

Alternative Method:

  • physically unplug your network cable from your computer, or disable the adapter under the network settings in the control panel.

Other tricks

Moving Steam games to another drive

Chances are your steamapps folder is huge and taking up a lot of hard drive space. It is possible to move the entire steamapps folder, or indeed individual games to another drive by utilising symbolic links. Symbolic links are like shortcuts except they are seen by the operating system and programs as the real thing. Symbolic links are supported in Windows as part of the NTFS filesystem, but are not accessible by default. So you will need the Link Shell Extension.

Once you've installed the extension, close Steam (open task manager too and make sure the process has ended). Now navigate to your steamapps folder, right click it and move it to your other drive. It doesn't matter where it goes, just put it somewhere that makes you happy. Wait for it to finish moving (it will probably take a while) and then right click it, choose "Pick Link Source" and go back to your Steam directory. Right click it and choose "Drop as -> Symbolic Link". When you relaunch Steam, it will continue to be able to detect your Steam games as if they never moved.

It is of course also possible to move individual Steam games and not just the whole directory. If you wanted to move Fallout: New Vegas, for example, you would go to steamapps\common\fallout new vegas, move it somewhere else and then pick link source, drop it as a symbolic link in steamapps\common.


Official Links