Problems with Steam

[Abernus]

Hi all,

Most of you people out there have probably got more sence than me. I bought Half Life 2 from Steam online. BIG MISTAKE. As I am now finding out Steam are shit and cant do ANYTHING correct!!!!!

I have tried to register for the official Steam forum but you have to wait for the Moderators to authorise you, BIG JOKE!!!!

I am posting here to see if you can help me. here is the problem I have

I have paide for the Silver subscription to Hlaf Life 2 on line. I installed Steam on my server and left my PC running over night to download the 6.5 hour download of Half Life 2. I ran the game on my server to make sure it works and all was fnie.

Now I want to move the instal over to my Gaming machine. My first thought was to download each game at a time and burn it to DVD then to save space I only have to install the game I want to play. BIG MISTAKE. I have spent all day today trying to get Half Life 2 working on my Gaming machine.

I have done a clean install of Steam on my Gaming machine and tried the following to get the game to work:

1. Copy all the GCF files over
2. Copy the entire Steam DIR over.
3. Run the 15Mb backup I created on my server through Steam of HL2

In all the above cases Steam tries to download the entire HL2 again another 6.5 hour Download.

So please can anyone tell me how to copy the HL2 game to DVD and how to get it running on my gaming machine.

If there is anytihg I have missed out in my fustration please ask I will reply as soon as I can.

Cheer.

 

[The Dark Elf]

moved to the right place.

 

[smoke2000]

you are talking about a 15 mb backup , i'm not sure what you are referring to, but anyway... When you launch steam on the computer on which it works go to play games and rightclick halflife2 and click on backup game files. It will create 1 file (a few gb) that you can transfer to your other computer and just double click it there. It will look for steam and install itself.

 

[^Ben]

Oh dear you tried tocopy of the steam install dir?

That's a no no.

Install steam on the machine you want it on, DONT COPY OVER THE DIR JUST INSTALL IT FROM www.steampowered.com And then from the PC with HL2 copy the STEAMAPPS folder over to the STEAMAPPS folder on the gaming machine.

If you have the PC's networked just copy the .gcf's over the network.

....

Don't blame steam for your own mistake.

 

[Abernus]

Thanks for the help and I am not balming Steam for my own mistakes. The first thing I tried was the backup, this is what gives me the 15Mb file in the folder called backups.

To get the 15 Mb file I launch Steam, Goto play games and right click on Half Life 2 and choose backup files, it runs through process of backing the files up and I am left with a 15mb .exe file at the end of it.

I have also tried to delete all folders connected to Valve/Steam and uninstall it from my gaming machine. Then from fresh, re-install steam copy all the CFG files over from the Steamapps folder to the new machine in Steamapps. When I re-launch Steam and go to play HL2 I get the updating Half-Life 2 screen and this will take 528 Mins (On 1Mb Broadband)

Sorry for the delay in reply but I need to unwind in the bath with a beer

Any other ideas?

 

[^Ben]

Ok follow theese steps exactly.

Grab another beer this could take a while

Uninstall all traces of steam from your gaming machine.

Reinstall it again and log in with your account, don't do anything yet.

On your server(im going to assume it's networked to the gaming machine) find the steamapps folder and then copy the contents of that folder(should be full of .gcf files) to your gaming machine.

Find the steamapps folder on your gaming machine, and then copy all of the .gcf's into that folder.

Login to steam, voila.

 

[Abernus]

O.k I tried what you suggested with no luck so left it over night. I checked again today and noticed something. I have Steam installed on my server at D:\misc\Steam. This is where I have been taking the CFG files from. When I looked on C drive on my server in program files I had a Steam DIR there and all the CFG files for HL2 in there as well. I copied these ones over and the game worked.

Does anyone have anyidea why these files where there. I have never installed Steam to my C drive.

Cheers ^Ben fior you help

 

[^Ben]

Don't copy CFG files just the GCF files.

Just uninstall steam and install it with default values on the C: drive and then do what I suggested.