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Steam won't let me install games

Cannon GooseCannon Goose I need some GAGS!If only I had my gag book!Registered User regular
I wasn't quite sure where to put this thread since there's already a dedicated Steam thread in the games forum, but I haven't been able to find any help there.

Basically Steam is telling me that the Steam servers are too busy to handle my request and that I should try again in a few minutes. Well, it's been telling me that for six days straight now and I'm starting to get really annoyed. This is a very recent thing and I've never had this problem before in the three or so years I have been using Steam.

I've been directed to the Steam Support page many times and tried everything on it several times to no avail.

Does anyone have any clue as to what I can do?

Cannon Goose on

Posts

  • ronyaronya Arrrrrf. the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
    edited June 2010
    What triggers it telling you this message?

    ronya on
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  • Cannon GooseCannon Goose I need some GAGS! If only I had my gag book!Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    I click the Install button on one of my uninstalled games (it doesn't seem to matter if I have played the game before or if it's a completely new purchase) and the window that tells me how big the download is pops up. I click Next and it tells me about creating shortcuts. I click Next again and it says "creating local game cache files" and a loading bar slowly fills.

    When it gets full the "your game is now installing" window pops up but at the same time the "steam server is too busy" error pops up over that. I click OK and I'm back to square one.

    Cannon Goose on
  • ronyaronya Arrrrrf. the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Create a new account, then try to install one of the free games onto it. Does it work?

    ronya on
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  • BarrakkethBarrakketh Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    I have gotten that message before when I was too low on disk space to really install the game (the size Steam checks for was a few gigabytes short) since I didn't allocate much extra room on my Windows partition.

    Barrakketh on
    Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
  • Cannon GooseCannon Goose I need some GAGS! If only I had my gag book!Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    I've checked the disk space and I don't think that's the issue. But I am glad you brought it up because that wasn't something I thought to look at.

    I will try making a new account shortly and report back.

    Cannon Goose on
  • Cannon GooseCannon Goose I need some GAGS! If only I had my gag book!Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Okay, so I can install some games... Just none of the games I want.

    This is bullshit.

    Cannon Goose on
  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Did you try renaming your Steam folder and reinstalling the app from scratch?

    Stormwatcher on
    Steam: Stormwatcher | PSN: Stormwatcher33 | Switch: 5961-4777-3491
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  • undeinPiratundeinPirat Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Something to try -- in the main steam window, go into the toolbar section labeled steam and then in the dropdown select settings.

    In this new window, open the tab labeled downloads. There should be a dropdown box with regions in it under a label of "Download Regions". Try picking another region (mine is set on Australia at the moment and I live on the east coast of the US, I actually didn't know that. My download speeds were still speedy though!) and testing that out.

    Only thing I can think of for trying stuff out.

    undeinPirat on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] steam: undeinpirat
  • TetraNitroCubaneTetraNitroCubane The Djinnerator At the bottom of a bottleRegistered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Two additional pieces of hoo-doo you can try if you're getting desperate:

    1.) Look in the Steam\Steamapps folder for any .gcf files which correspond to the games you're trying to install. If you see any, delete them. I had HUGE problems with a corrupted Left4Dead.gcf file a while back that caused issues I never would have anticipated.

    2.) If you're willing to, you can delete everything in the Steam folder except for Steam.exe and the \Steamapps folder. All your games will be preserved if your Steamapps folder is intact, and so long as the original Steam.exe is in place, it should redownload/reconstruct the files it needs on the next launch.

    TetraNitroCubane on
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  • ronyaronya Arrrrrf. the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Plus some things to do if you have time and are really patient:

    chkdsk /r C:

    and on whatever other drive letters you have.

    Exit Steam, rename steamapps, start Steam. See if you can download that one game you want.

    ronya on
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  • AzioAzio Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    I can't believe this hasn't been posted yet.

    Go to your Steam directory and delete clientregistry.blob. This usually solves the "servers too busy" error.

    Azio on
  • ronyaronya Arrrrrf. the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
    edited June 2010
    He said he'd done that already, back when he was still trying the Steam thread.

    ronya on
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  • Michael HMichael H Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    What did Steam support say in their emails?

    Michael H on
  • ArkyrisArkyris Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    What country do you live in? I get this error when I apply a filter to my server list to remove servers not from my country and the game doesn't exist on those servers.

    So if you live in Australia and have anything like Steam Watch or Frey's Filter running, try turning them off. If you live somewhere else, try mess around with the location tab, see if you can find a server with your games on them.

    Arkyris on
  • Cannon GooseCannon Goose I need some GAGS! If only I had my gag book!Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    I'm in Australia and do use Frey's Steam Filter but it seems to make no difference whether I have it on or off. I've tried changing my download region to every other Australian location, to New Zealand, to places in the United States - none of those work.
    Two additional pieces of hoo-doo you can try if you're getting desperate:

    1.) Look in the Steam\Steamapps folder for any .gcf files which correspond to the games you're trying to install. If you see any, delete them. I had HUGE problems with a corrupted Left4Dead.gcf file a while back that caused issues I never would have anticipated.

    2.) If you're willing to, you can delete everything in the Steam folder except for Steam.exe and the \Steamapps folder. All your games will be preserved if your Steamapps folder is intact, and so long as the original Steam.exe is in place, it should redownload/reconstruct the files it needs on the next launch.

    I will try these things next.

    Cannon Goose on
  • ArkyrisArkyris Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    While you have probably tested everything to do with Frey's, I have had the program mess up on me once or twice. It would say that the filter was on, but then wouldn't filter anything. It is possible that it has bugged out for you in an opposite fashion.

    While I don't know much about Freys, if it starts as a Windows service or something else. But it might be something to investigate if none of your other options work.

    Arkyris on
  • Cannon GooseCannon Goose I need some GAGS! If only I had my gag book!Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Hmm. So I tried this
    2.) If you're willing to, you can delete everything in the Steam folder except for Steam.exe and the \Steamapps folder. All your games will be preserved if your Steamapps folder is intact, and so long as the original Steam.exe is in place, it should redownload/reconstruct the files it needs on the next launch.
    and that didn't work. It would start and then begin updating but always freeze at 38%

    So I deleted everything in the Steam folder and in my haste, accidentally deleted my steamapps folder. Something I had really been trying to avoid.

    BUT I reinstalled Steam and now my games are downloading just fine! Thanks to everyone for your help.

    Go ahead and lock this thread now, my problem has been solved.

    Cannon Goose on
  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Oy, Vey, I got that same problem
    I'm gonna delete those steam files too.

    Stormwatcher on
    Steam: Stormwatcher | PSN: Stormwatcher33 | Switch: 5961-4777-3491
    camo_sig2.png
  • Cannon GooseCannon Goose I need some GAGS! If only I had my gag book!Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Now I'm getting "NO CONNECTION" and no access to my Friends list. But that seems to due to Steam doing some server work or something like that.

    Hopefully it'll be fine by tomorrow.

    Cannon Goose on
  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited June 2010
    YEah, Steam seems to be down.
    I can download a few games (Sin) but most won't work (WiC SA, Penumbra, UT3).

    EDIT Yeah, it was one of those weird files inside Steamapps but outside the COMMON folder.
    One of them was broken.

    Stormwatcher on
    Steam: Stormwatcher | PSN: Stormwatcher33 | Switch: 5961-4777-3491
    camo_sig2.png
  • Cannon GooseCannon Goose I need some GAGS! If only I had my gag book!Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Turns out this problem has NOT been resolved. I managed to download Team Fortress 2 but only a couple of other games will download. The majority of them just give me the "Steam servers are currently too busy to handle your request." error, which includes a game I just bought - Painkiller Black Edition.

    I thought if servers were busy it would find another server for you to download from? I find it hard to believe that the servers are seriously THAT busy constantly for the past week AND there are no other servers that I could be downloading from.

    Steam is becoming seriously unusable for me and I'm being locked out of about 18 games...

    Cannon Goose on
  • ImpersonatorImpersonator Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Why haven't you contacted Steam Support?

    Impersonator on
  • Cannon GooseCannon Goose I need some GAGS! If only I had my gag book!Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    I have. They linked me to this page which I had already been to many times.

    I emailed them again and they told me that my problem was due to Steam maintenance despite the fact that the issues began before the maintenance started and have continued well after the maintenance concluded.

    I really have no idea what to do next, I've tried everything.

    Cannon Goose on
  • ronyaronya Arrrrrf. the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
    edited June 2010
    It may be a problem on your end, since apparently Steam spits out this cryptic error if it encounters something unexpected while trying to install stuff.

    You have enough disk space, right? Defragment the drive, too. And run a disk check - chkdsk /r C:

    If you have an external hard drive, copy what you have in \steamapps there, then uninstall Steam. Reinstall Steam to a location on the external hard drive (instead of C:\program files), start it, and see if you can download what you want.

    Disable your antivirus programs and anything that might intercept an attempt to write to disc.

    ronya on
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  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited June 2010
    It's the CGF files in your steamapps folder.
    You might have a bad HDD that corrupts them. Try deleting the newest CGF file in that folder and try again.

    Stormwatcher on
    Steam: Stormwatcher | PSN: Stormwatcher33 | Switch: 5961-4777-3491
    camo_sig2.png
  • Cannon GooseCannon Goose I need some GAGS! If only I had my gag book!Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    ronya wrote: »
    It may be a problem on your end, since apparently Steam spits out this cryptic error if it encounters something unexpected while trying to install stuff.

    You have enough disk space, right? Defragment the drive, too. And run a disk check - chkdsk /r C:

    If you have an external hard drive, copy what you have in \steamapps there, then uninstall Steam. Reinstall Steam to a location on the external hard drive (instead of C:\program files), start it, and see if you can download what you want.

    Disable your antivirus programs and anything that might intercept an attempt to write to disc.

    Tried these and they didn't seem to help. Thanks for the ideas though.

    It's the CGF files in your steamapps folder.
    You might have a bad HDD that corrupts them. Try deleting the newest CGF file in that folder and try again.

    Trying this next.

    Cannon Goose on
  • Cannon GooseCannon Goose I need some GAGS! If only I had my gag book!Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    FINALLY FIXED IT!

    All thanks to this.

    Cannon Goose on
  • ronyaronya Arrrrrf. the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Congrats! You should announce your success in the Steam thread too :P

    ronya on
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  • Cannon GooseCannon Goose I need some GAGS! If only I had my gag book!Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Will do.

    Thanks to everyone for all the help!

    Cannon Goose on
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