Steam won't let me install games

Cannon Goose

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?

ronya

What triggers it telling you this message?

Cannon Goose

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.

ronya

Create a new account, then try to install one of the free games onto it. Does it work?

Barrakketh

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.

Cannon Goose

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

Okay, so I can install some games... Just none of the games I want.

This is bullshit.

Stormwatcher

Did you try renaming your Steam folder and reinstalling the app from scratch?

undeinPirat

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.

TetraNitroCubane

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.

ronya

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.

Azio

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.

ronya

He said he'd done that already, back when he was still trying the Steam thread.

Michael H

What did Steam support say in their emails?

Arkyris

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.

Cannon Goose

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.

TetraNitroCubane wrote: »

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.

Arkyris

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.

Cannon Goose

Hmm. So I tried this

TetraNitroCubane wrote: »

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.

Stormwatcher

Oy, Vey, I got that same problem
I'm gonna delete those steam files too.

Cannon Goose

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.

Stormwatcher

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.

Cannon Goose

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...

Impersonator

Why haven't you contacted Steam Support?

Cannon Goose

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.

ronya

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.

Stormwatcher

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.

Cannon Goose

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.

Stormwatcher wrote: »

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

FINALLY FIXED IT!

All thanks to this.

ronya

Congrats! You should announce your success in the Steam thread too :P

Cannon Goose

Will do.

Thanks to everyone for all the help!