Steam not working?

[Whitman82]

I can't log in to my steam account for some reason. When i go to retrieve lost account nothing works. I put in my user name, email, and cd key, but nothing works. Anyone else's steam not working?

[HangFire]

I think it just takes quite a while for the key to arrive, it did when I forgot my pass.

[Whitman82]

My steam is messing up again! I'm so fed up with this piece of shit software!
Now its saying i'm not connected to the internet, or my internet is not setup correctly for steam. i can then either click on retry connection, or start in offline mode. Not matter which one i click i get another message saying i could not connect to steam because i'm not connected to the net, or because steam is down. I doubt steam is down because i haven't been able to log on for almost a week now, and I'm ovbiously connected to the net if i'm able to post this. Anyone else gettin this bs?

[von Ryan]

nope, everything normal here... But look on the brighter side, it could be worse... remember the times when steam was verry buggy...

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

Perhaps you installed a new firewall or something ? Or you updated to WinXP SP2 ?

[Whitman82]

If you have auto updater turned on, will it download that new xp automatically? Other wise i don't have it. And i did just install that new spyware program from microsoft which has an option to have it block spyware before it gets to your computer. But i turned it off and steam still won't start.

[Denny]

Originally Posted by Whitman82

If you have auto updater turned on, will it download that new xp automatically? Other wise i don't have it. And i did just install that new spyware program from microsoft which has an option to have it block spyware before it gets to your computer. But i turned it off and steam still won't start.

Yes, if you have Auto Update turned on Microsoft no doubt forced SP2 onto your computer, in fact they did it to everyone. It was announced awhile back that they were gonna do that no matter if people like it or not, well only those that have Windows Update turned on anyway.

You can tell if you look at your system tray (next to the computer clock in the corner), if you see a Red shield looking thing with an x in the middle, then SP2 is installed on your machine. Alternatively you could right click on My Computer and select properties and it'll tell you, you probably already know this though, but i figured i'd mention the whole Microsoft/SP2 thing.

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

Usually, when the SP2 is installed and you run a program that needs internet access, Windows pop up a dialog box asking you whether you want to "unlock" this program. You should say yes for Steam and everything Steam related (hl2.exe, etc.) If you don't, Windows will continue blocking it and will not ask you about it anymore.

Check your firewall settings in Control Panel->Windows Firewall, Exceptions tab. Tick the box next to the program you want to unlock, or suppress it if you want Windows to ask you again about it.

[Whitman82]

Windows xp has its own firewall built in, doesn't it? I don't know if anyone here has heard of it, but microsoft released a new spyware program with an active proctection firewall to stop spyware, which i happened to have installed right around the time my steam stopped working. I was thinking maybe my steam got messed up because i had xp's and that spyware's firewall running at the same time causing them to conflict with eachother? I uninstalled and reinstalled hl2 and steam, and its working now. I have that spyware program turned off and i'm scared to use it again because i don't want to have problems with steam again. Do you guys think that might have been the problem?

[Denny]

Originally Posted by Whitman82

Windows xp has its own firewall built in, doesn't it? I don't know if anyone here has heard of it, but microsoft released a new spyware program with an active proctection firewall to stop spyware, which i happened to have installed right around the time my steam stopped working. I was thinking maybe my steam got messed up because i had xp's and that spyware's firewall running at the same time causing them to conflict with eachother? I uninstalled and reinstalled hl2 and steam, and its working now. I have that spyware program turned off and i'm scared to use it again because i don't want to have problems with steam again. Do you guys think that might have been the problem?

Yes it does come with one but it can be deactivated, same with the version that comes with SP2. That Spyware program could have done that, but you shouldn't have to disable it all the time if that was the case, just whenever you wanna run Steam. I personally just use Spybot and Adaware and just do regular scans instead of having activae spyware scanner. Also if you use a different browser such as Firefox you don't get as much spyware.

Also the new versions of Norton Antivirus can block incoming connections accusing them of being worms, i had numorous problems with that.