Steam broken - need help

Omaeka · 1 Nov 2012 at 22:36

Steam has been an absolute nightmare for a few days now, it's locking up and forcing me to end process almost constantly. It almost always becomes (not responding) whenever I try and log in to the point I can almost never access Steam now. I'd ask Steam support but they're useless from the times I've used them, always give some generic response not even related to my issue.

I think this calls for a reinstall of Steam but last time I did that I completely naffed it all up and had to re-identify my steamapps/common games which took ages. Anyone know a fast, painless way of reinstalling it? Thanks!

~>Dg<~ · 1 Nov 2012 at 22:54

how big is your steam file ?

if not too big just do clean wipe install fresh if got good connection

H3RBSKI · 1 Nov 2012 at 22:57

Can't remember exactly how you do it but there is a way to re install steam but keep your games saved. I think you delete everything in your steam folder apart from the steam apps and steam exe file. Then double click the steam exe and it will re install the program but keep all your games

dogmanstaruk · 1 Nov 2012 at 22:59

Omaeka said:
I think this calls for a reinstall of Steam but last time I did that I completely naffed it all up and had to re-identify my steamapps/common games which took ages. Anyone know a fast, painless way of reinstalling it? Thanks!

I'm kinda funny that I do regular fresh window reinstalls. Steam isn't on my primary drive, but all I do after I've reinstalled Windows is move the steamapps folder to my back up folder. Then delete the old Steam folder, and reinstall it. After the newly installed Steam has updated etc, I close it down, and move my steamapps folder back to the main steam directory.

Try that I've never had a problem doing it that way.

PapaLazaru · 1 Nov 2012 at 23:04

Have you tried deleting the 'ClientRegistry.blob' file and restarted?

Omaeka · 1 Nov 2012 at 23:07

I've done what Valve suggested and deleted everything except steamapps/common and Steam.exe and let it reupdate itself with all the core Steam files and it's worked. a lot of things have screwed up, Skyrim had to redownload 10GB at 50kbs - got to 60MB then shot up complete, so was just updating before revalidating, was scary.

Now I just gotta convert a few games to 'a new, more efficient format' (which I did before reinstalling Steam) and it should be done, all works no more lock ups. Mods can lock and let this die, least there is a fix for this issue in the search on here now.