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Help! Windows 10 Upgrade broke Steam!

Magic PinkMagic Pink Tur-Boner-FedRegistered User regular
We upgraded to Windows 10 on my bf's laptop and now none of his Steam games will start. We got Civ V to work by deleting it and re-downloading but that didn't work for anything else, and Don't Starve seems to work fine as well but that's it.

Any suggestions? We've tried disabling compatibility mode and upgrading all the drivers.

Posts

  • ShadowfireShadowfire Vermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered User regular
    edited May 2016
    Have you tried reinstalling Steam? You can delete everything but the "common" directory, then try and reinstall Steam.

    Edit: Is it only Steam games? Does he have any games on Origin, GOG, or anywhere else that do run?

    Shadowfire on
    WiiU: Windrunner ; Guild Wars 2: Shadowfire.3940 ; PSN: Bradcopter
  • Magic PinkMagic Pink Tur-Boner-Fed Registered User regular
    Yep, we did resinstall Steam. He doesn't have any other service to test.

    The one thing I did find is that some forums say that everything in the My Games folder in Documents needs to have the Read Only setting unchecked. His My Games folder is checked as Read Only but we can't seem to make it stay unchecked. Hit the square, hit Apply, hit Ok but if I go back in Properties it still has Read Only checked.

  • SnicketysnickSnicketysnick The Greatest Hype Man in WesterosRegistered User regular
    For what it's worth I'm on Win10 and my MyGames folder is checked as read only and I've got no problems with steam (at least that I've noticed).

    Have you tried verifying the integrity of game files on steam?

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    D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
  • Magic PinkMagic Pink Tur-Boner-Fed Registered User regular
    For what it's worth I'm on Win10 and my MyGames folder is checked as read only and I've got no problems with steam (at least that I've noticed).

    Have you tried verifying the integrity of game files on steam?

    Yep.

  • tsmvengytsmvengy Registered User regular
    No errors or anything? Do the programs even attempt to load?

    steam_sig.png
  • BahamutZEROBahamutZERO Registered User regular
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    Yep, we did resinstall Steam. He doesn't have any other service to test.

    The one thing I did find is that some forums say that everything in the My Games folder in Documents needs to have the Read Only setting unchecked. His My Games folder is checked as Read Only but we can't seem to make it stay unchecked. Hit the square, hit Apply, hit Ok but if I go back in Properties it still has Read Only checked.

    I had a similar problem once and read similar advice somewhere, the thing that tripped me up was that the "read only" checkbox actually has 3 states, empty, checked, and... a square. The one it keeps reapplying is the square. I don't know what the square actually means but it's not the same as being read-only and it's not actually a problem. I don't remember what I actually did to get steam working though, I just remember those read-only checkboxes in the steam data folders being a confusing red herring.

    BahamutZERO.gif
  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    a square usually means that some of the folder/sub folders are marked with whatever attribute and some are not.

    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
  • BahamutZEROBahamutZERO Registered User regular
    as far as I can tell, all folders show the square symbol whether or not there's any read only files inside them, and if you change them to unchecked they switch back to square when you close the properties window.

    BahamutZERO.gif
  • Magic PinkMagic Pink Tur-Boner-Fed Registered User regular
    tsmvengy wrote: »
    No errors or anything? Do the programs even attempt to load?

    I get the initial starting black box like with every game and then that closes and nothing happens.

  • tsmvengytsmvengy Registered User regular
    What other programs are running in the background? I'm reading about some issues people are having with AMD's GPU background software.

    steam_sig.png
  • Magic PinkMagic Pink Tur-Boner-Fed Registered User regular
    Not sure, I won't be able to check until the weekend but I'm pretty sure he doesn't have an AMD card.

  • tsmvengytsmvengy Registered User regular
    Well, my ultimate advice like with most things is to stop wasting time trying to figure out the problem, and just nuke it from orbit and start over. Back up what you need, and wipe the drive and do a fresh install of Windows.

    steam_sig.png
  • Magic PinkMagic Pink Tur-Boner-Fed Registered User regular
    edited May 2016
    tsmvengy wrote: »
    Well, my ultimate advice like with most things is to stop wasting time trying to figure out the problem, and just nuke it from orbit and start over. Back up what you need, and wipe the drive and do a fresh install of Windows.

    I'm not even sure how to do that, especially since we used the free upgrade dealy. But yeah, that was my initial best fix idea too.

    Magic Pink on
  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    tsmvengy wrote: »
    Well, my ultimate advice like with most things is to stop wasting time trying to figure out the problem, and just nuke it from orbit and start over. Back up what you need, and wipe the drive and do a fresh install of Windows.

    I'm not even sure how to do that, especially since we used the free upgrade dealy. But yeah, that was my initial best fix idea too.

    in settings there is a backup and recovery menu, which lets you do a PC reset, choose the option that will not keep any of your files, and you will be returned to a fresh install of windows 10. And agian, as a reminder. Make sure everything is backed up somewhere else not on that computer. It might sound obvious, but when the PC reset says it will not keep any of your files, it means it will delete everything.

    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
  • tsmvengytsmvengy Registered User regular
    wunderbar wrote: »
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    tsmvengy wrote: »
    Well, my ultimate advice like with most things is to stop wasting time trying to figure out the problem, and just nuke it from orbit and start over. Back up what you need, and wipe the drive and do a fresh install of Windows.

    I'm not even sure how to do that, especially since we used the free upgrade dealy. But yeah, that was my initial best fix idea too.

    in settings there is a backup and recovery menu, which lets you do a PC reset, choose the option that will not keep any of your files, and you will be returned to a fresh install of windows 10. And agian, as a reminder. Make sure everything is backed up somewhere else not on that computer. It might sound obvious, but when the PC reset says it will not keep any of your files, it means it will delete everything.

    Yes. If you have two drives in the machine, you can things up to the secondary drive and then disconnect it. Then reinstall. You can also backup to an external drive and disconnect it.

    steam_sig.png
  • Magic PinkMagic Pink Tur-Boner-Fed Registered User regular
    Ok, thanks folks, I'll try that.

  • FremFrem Registered User regular
    edited May 2016
    I've had similar sounding issue before. The problem wasn't with the "My Games" folder (if there's something wrong with that, you'll just have trouble with saves), it was with the steamapps directory that lurks inside Steam in Program FIles.

    I'd used Steam Mover to move games from my C drive to my G drive. The way Steam Mover works is that it creates a junction; like a shortcut at the filesystem level. Something happened to the junction; it was just broken. I ended up deleting it, using Steam to create a new library folder, and moving all my game directories into it. I also had to change the directory ownership; I didn't have write access for some reason.

    Frem on
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