Really Weird Steam Problem.

TetraNitroCubane

Hi everyone. I've been having some seriously mind-boggling problems with Steam today, and I can't really figure out what's going on. I have an official support ticket submitted, but those don't usually progress too quickly. Additionally, the Steam forums are pretty useless. I'm hoping someone here has seen something similiar...

So, the latest patch was not applied to L4D for me. After waiting for it to be auto-applied, I finally tried to run the game... This caused the game to say that there were problems with my local files, and that the files were going to be redownloaded. I'm fine with that, so I click okay... only to have it tell me exactly the same thing. Only when I click cancle, am I allowed to actually use Steam again.

So I tried to delete the local content from the Steam menu. Upon deleting local content, I get the error message 'You do not have enough disk space available to run this game. Please free up some disk space and try again.'

Uh, WHAT? I don't have enough disk space to DELETE THE GAME? What on earth does that even mean? I have over 200 GB free, anyway.

I can't delete the local content. I can't redownload the content. I can't play the game. All other Steam games work fine. Can anyone provide some assistance? Thanks.

TychoCelchuuu

Can you verify the content?

vonPoonBurGer

Steam has a local database / configuration cache. When that thing gets munged up, Steam starts to do very silly things. Go into your Steam install folder, and delete absolutely everything except steam.exe and your steamapps folder (which is where downloaded games are stored). Run Steam, and it should automatically patch itself, download missing files and set up its cache. Once that's done, do a full file verify on L4D. If all that doesn't fix it, I'd say you'll need to get Steam support involved.

TetraNitroCubane

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

Can you verify the content?

When I try, it seems to start verifying... and then just stops as if it had finished up. No errors, but no verification. If I try to defragment, it tells me that things are so seriously fragmented that I need to defragment my harddrive - Which is bullshit, because I just defragmented my harddrive 30 min beforehand.

Even trying to manually delete the game by tossing the files in the recycle bin doesn't seem to work. L4D just stays there on my games list, claiming that the status is 'download starting...' but it doesn't do anything. Further attempts to delete it from the games pannel result in the same 'Your hard drive is too full to delete anything!' message.

Just for grins, I tried deleting other games that I have on Steam. The local content for them, and redownloading, went off without any problems at all.

TetraNitroCubane

vonPoonBurGer wrote: »

Steam has a local database / configuration cache. When that thing gets munged up, Steam starts to do very silly things. Go into your Steam install folder, and delete absolutely everything except steam.exe and your steamapps folder (which is where downloaded games are stored). Run Steam, and it should automatically patch itself, download missing files and set up its cache. Once that's done, do a full file verify on L4D. If all that doesn't fix it, I'd say you'll need to get Steam support involved.

This sounds like a good method of approach. I'm at work currently, but I'll be trying this as soon as I possibly can. Thanks for the tip. (And Steam support already has a ticket from me.... knowing them, they'll reply with a form email telling me to verify content - in about a week).

TetraNitroCubane

So, I tried what you suggested, vonPoonBurGer. Unfortunately, it didn't work. I even tried uninstalling Steam completely, then removing the reminants of the old install, and installing to a fresh directory. Even after all that Steam still tells me I have insufficient disk space to delete something.

The hell of it is that it just sits there, pretending to download L4D. It's not doing a damn thing, just says 'download starting...'. The properties list that the game has 2.5 GB of space taken up, but the damned directory is empty.

Yeah, I really doubt Steam support is going to help with this one. That's $50 I've never getting back, and like 5 friends I've lost now that they're getting sucked into the game again.

proXimity

They can't be very good friends if you lose them because you're not able to play a video game.
Anyways, a probably sure fire solution to this problem would be to reinstall Windows, though I don't know if you're willing to go through all of that.

vonPoonBurGer

I'm honestly surprised that a full reinstall of Steam didn't do the trick. Did you blow away any Steam-related registry keys before reinstalling? Not sure if something in there could be shagging up the works.

If that's not the case, then it really doesn't seem like a Steam-specific problem. More like a weird interaction between Steam and something else going on with your system. Is there anything of interest in the Windows event log (Start > Run > eventvwr)?

Ruckus

run a chkdsk /R on the partition where steam is installed, see if you have any bad blocks.

Warrn

I've had this exact problem before, but a reinstall of Steam fixed it for me. It's mind-boggling that the reinstall didn't fix it.

TetraNitroCubane

I am as baffled as the rest of you by this, particularly the reinstall. I've tried so many things that I fear having caused other problems... BUT, I think I got it working. I'm not sure what voodoo I did, but here's a list of things I had to do in case Google decides that this problem is relevant to other searches!

1. I uninstalled Steam, via the Add/Remove programs tab. I preserved my Steamapps folder. I deleted the Left 4 Dead folder.
2. I ran a chkdsk /R, rebooted for it to take effect.
3. I reinstalled Steam, then moved my Steamapps back into the installed folder.
4. I tried to run Steam, reconfigured everything, and... Same problem was happening.
5. I shut down steam, then looked in the Steamapps folder. In the root Steamapps folder (NOT the left 4 dead subfolder), there was a Left 4 Dead gfc file. I must have been preserving this the whole time, and it must have gotten corrupted. I deleted it, then restarted Steam.

Steam decided at this point that it was the first time it had ever run, and all my games (though preserved) went through their 'first installation' run, but hell, L4D was off my list and I was able to redownload it. I'm about 75% there now, so when it finishes up I'll edit this post to say whether or not it work out in the end. But yeah, if I had run chkdsk and deleted that gfc file I probably could spared myself all this trouble.

Thanks guys. Your advice helped me out way more than anything else!

EDIT: Seems to have worked!

vonPoonBurGer

I've never heard of a gfc file corruption that their file repair couldn't fix, but it really looks like that's what happened here. Hope it works now!

Toisich

Just wanted to say that this fixed a problem for me as well.

I felt like playing some Emprie Total War today, after having shelved it for about 2-3 months. Unfortunately it said that the files were fragmented, so i clicked the button to defrag them, and it said that my hard disk had too much defragmentation so I needed to run my system defrag tool.

So I did so, and went to launch the game again. It said I needed to run the system defrag... again. Well I wasn't about to do that.

So I tried to uninstall it, and I get the "you do not have enough memory to play this game" or some such nonsense... Not enough memory to uninstall a game... interesting.

So after some searching, I found this thread. Deleted my empiretotalwar.ncf file in the steamapps folder, along with the empire total war folder, and voila, i'm re downloading the game.

Thanks for figuring this out.

V_E_B

Hello
Had exactly the same problem (fake fragmentation, impossible to uninstall due to full-but-not-full disk, etc...) on Dawn of War II.
After reading this post, I tried just deleting the "dawn of war 2 common files.ncf" file in steamapps, and I was able to redownload the game. No need to uninstall or delete the local content beforehand. Once re-downloaded, the game work like a charm.
Hope this'll help

proXimity

Oh hey this thread is a year old tomorrow :P