Solved Steam games broken

[bobland]

I've been playing Portal 2 and Saints 3 for the past month with no problem. Portal 2 is from the original release date. Recently, I can't get these games to work. On a reboot, Steam does this endless update. Eventually, it finishes. I open steam and it updates again. When it finishes it may or may not connect to steam. When it does, if I select Portal 2 if immediately fails with no explanation. If I start Saints 3 it starts up to the message stating autosave then fails. I get a message saying I should delete appcache. I do this and go thru the whole routing again.

Results? Same. Nothing.

I've put a ticket in but have not heard for a week. I'm hoping someone has experienced this or something similar and may have a solution. I'm not very reluctant to buy any game that uses steam if this is what to expect.

Personally, I'm getting a little tired of this requirement to go online to play a non-online game. But that's just the opinion of a get-off-my-lawn-cranky-old-guy.

 

[Solarstarshines]

I've been playing Portal 2 and Saints 3 for the past month with no problem. Portal 2 is from the original release date. Recently, I can't get these games to work. On a reboot, Steam does this endless update. Eventually, it finishes. I open steam and it updates again. When it finishes it may or may not connect to steam. When it does, if I select Portal 2 if immediately fails with no explanation. If I start Saints 3 it starts up to the message stating autosave then fails. I get a message saying I should delete appcache. I do this and go thru the whole routing again.

Results? Same. Nothing.

I've put a ticket in but have not heard for a week. I'm hoping someone has experienced this or something similar and may have a solution. I'm not very reluctant to buy any game that uses steam if this is what to expect.

Personally, I'm getting a little tired of this requirement to go online to play a non-online game. But that's just the opinion of a get-off-my-lawn-cranky-old-guy.

Right click on game click on local files then click verify integrity of game cache after it does it's thing it should be ok again to play

 

[bobland]

I tried a few variations of what you suggest. None worked. Steam did the whole update process. Portal 2 stopped immediately.

 

[Contrabardus]

If verifying cache integrity doesn't work there are a couple of things you can try depending on whether it is Steam or the games that's the issue.

If it's Steam, I'd try moving your appdata folder to your desktop, then uninstall Steam and run a registry cleaner like CCleaner. After it's finished reinstall Steam, delete everything but your Steam.exe file in the Steam Folder, put the Steamapps folder back in with Steam.exe, and then run the Steam.exe. It will update for a bit and everything should run fine after that.

For some reason, simply putting your Steamapps folder in a fresh install of Steam without deleting the other files and running the exe the way I described doesn't work very well. So be sure to follow those steps and not simply attempt to drag and drop Steamapps into the fresh install. It may work fine, but it can cause issues. It's best to just spend the extra couple of minutes it takes to delete the Steam folder contents and run the exe after putting Steamapps back.

If it's the games, try uninstalling the games, running a registry cleaner [I use CCleaner] and reinstalling them. Sometimes corrupted registry keys cause problems and need to be cleaned out before a game will reinstall properly.

 

[sygnus21]

I tried a few variations of what you suggest. None worked. Steam did the whole update process. Portal 2 stopped immediately.

Yeah I'm not sure what's going on here, but I think Steam did an update and strange things are happening.

I went to play Bioshock Infinite and noticed it was downloading a new DLC for the game. After the DLC finished when I went to start the game I would get a quick blurp like the game was starting and then nothing...

Anyway restarting both PC and Steam seems to have fixed it for me.

For the most part Steam is pretty reliable but every now and then they have an update that seems to throw things for a loop.

 

[Contrabardus]

Are you signed up for Beta Participation with Steam?

If so, you might want to turn that option off.

Go to the Steam library and click on the "Steam" option on the upper left, in the drop down list go to 'settings' and make sure 'Beta Participation' is unchecked. When done, restart Steam. If you're using a beta driver it should roll back to the previous stable driver.

Unless you don't mind troubleshooting and sending in error reports, there's no good reason to use Beta Participation. Steam is a lot more reliable and less prone to issues if you're not opted into Beta testing.

 

[bobland]

I renamed the original folder and reinstalled Steam, with the SteamApps moved to the desktop. All that happens is the endless "Updating..." cycle. I noticed that it goes into a new message "Extracting Package..." but immediately closes and there is no further updating anywhere.

I've tried clicking the Steam.exe, SteamTmp.exe, both games in the Steam menu option of the Start menu but nothing works other than the endless updating.

 

[sygnus21]

Check this out and see if it helps - https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2971-RUAG-7390

 

[bobland]

Tried that a number of times and even rebooted but did not change a thing. I noticed on the Steam discussion boards that a number of people are having problems with Steam. Perhaps, I just need to focus elsewhere for a while.

 

[sygnus21]

Tried that a number of times and even rebooted but did not change a thing. I noticed on the Steam discussion boards that a number of people are having problems with Steam. Perhaps, I just need to focus elsewhere for a while.

As I said, every time Steam does an update something goes awry for a moment. Anyway I'm having no problems here... thankfully.

Yeah I still get the verification screen....



but I pretty much ignore it as everything else just works

 

[sygnus21]

Check this out and see if it helps - https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2971-RUAG-7390

Tried that a number of times and even rebooted but did not change a thing. I noticed on the Steam discussion boards that a number of people are having problems with Steam. Perhaps, I just need to focus elsewhere for a while.

As I said, every time Steam does an update something goes awry for a moment. Anyway I'm having no problems here... thankfully.

Yeah I still get the verification screen....

View attachment 279400

but I pretty much ignore it as everything else just works

You know, the joke is people never follow their own advice

Well after following step 2 here (under Windows), which is the link I posted above, I was FINALLY able fix the contestant Steam update issue.
If you're having this issue, do give the fix a try.

Oh, and follow your advice... you might find it even works for you

 

[bobland]

I recently switched ISPs. In the process, I also got a new modem, a Motorola SBG6580, which the installer tech said he carries in the truck. This is a primarily wireless modem. After the install, I got a 50 Mbps + speed. Unfortunately, my wife's computer, which is the really important one because she works at home and I just fool around, only got sub 3 Mbps. I called tech support and they made did some channel switching. She then got 12 Mbps but mine dropped to 1.5. Frustrated, I put all the wires back in and found we both got 50 again. Rechecked Amazon and found many users reporting problems with wireless.

The point of this is after I put the wires in, I reinstalled Steam and for the first time in over 22 days it installed correctly. I had to reinstall Portal 2 but got that and Saints 3 up and running. The Steam tech support had suggested using a wire to the modem a few times but this is difficult because the original ISPs wireless modem was further away then any cable I had so I wrongly assumed it wouldn't make a difference.

Funny how a simple thing like that made all the difference.