If this looks familiar, you have a problem…
… but seriously, a few clan members have been experiencing Steam and Valve game difficulties of late, so I thought I’d type up a few of the tricks that have worked for me in the past to tame Steam when it misbehaves:
Attack of The Blob
Find your steam directory, then delete ClientRegistry.blob. Restart Steam, this file should be recreated automatically. Note: if your OS is Vista or Windows 7 you will likely need to right-click Steam.exe and Run as administrator for this to work.
Verify integrity of game cache
Open your Steam games list, right click on a game and choose Properties. Now choose the Local files tab and run Verify integrity of game cache…
This can take a little while, and if the files are corrupted, Steam may download the missing bits, but these are generally very small downloads.
While you have this tab open, you can also try Defragment cache files. This can fix some performance issues.
Force resolution
If you can load the game only to the Steam logo and no further, this might help.
Right click on a game in Steam and choose Properties. Now choose the General tab and run Set launch options…. Now add to the text input -w 1024 -h 768 to force a lower resolution.
Panic!
If all else fails, you can always delete Steam altogether and re-install it. You can either re-download all the games, or better yet, copy the Steam folder from a friend’s PC.
After copying Steam across you may find you have to run some of the fixes above (especially number 1) to get Steam operational again.
Hopefully, your steam engine is back up again and running smoothly…
