All Steam games suddenly not working, help!

BaconXBits · Nov 13, 2009

So one day I'm playing Borderlands, killing people left and right, and I decide to take a break. Next thing I know (as in next time running a game, give or take a few hour time period), all of my Steam games don't work at all. More specifically, it just flickers between the Valve logo and the menu (for TF2/CSS/L4D) and the opening credits just flicker and repeat for Borderlands. Now I'm not sure if I rebooted/turned off/slept my computer between these two points in time (of working and not-working), but I definitely did not install anything.

Things worth noting:
-OS: Windows 7 Ultimate (JUST installed on a spanking new 1TB HDD)
-Hardware: EVGA 8800GTX, Intel Q6600 Quad Core, ASUS P5Q Pro Turbo mobo
-Non-Steam games work perfectly fine (Mirror's Edge tested, assuming my other games work too; too lazy to install everything).
-Installing new nVIDIA drivers doesn't fix it.
-AVG and AdAware don't find anything wrong.
-CCleaning in general and in registry doesn't fix it.
-Removing my graphics card and replugging everything in doesn't fix it (this was before I tested other games lol)
-Deleting Steam and all of my games, and proceeding to reinstall EVERYTHING doesn't fix it.
-I'm typically a very neat computer user, so I have very little crap cluttering my computer.

I don't want to have to wipe my HDD and start anew, since chances are I'll run into this problem again if I don't know what's wrong. I could TRY defragging tonight, but I doubt that would make a difference.

Help would be greatly appreciated!

Mussels · Nov 13, 2009

try cutting your steamapps folder out to somewhere safe, then uninstalling and reinstalling steam.

once done, copy/cut andpaste the steamapps folder back in.

that will fix any issues with steam itself, without requiring you to re-download your games.

BaconXBits · Nov 13, 2009

Mussels said:
try cutting your steamapps folder out to somewhere safe, then uninstalling and reinstalling steam.

once done, copy/cut andpaste the steamapps folder back in.

that will fix any issues with steam itself, without requiring you to re-download your games.

Well either way, reinstalling them didn't help in the first place.

Wile E · Nov 13, 2009

Reinstall directx?

BaconXBits · Nov 13, 2009

Wile E said:
Reinstall directx?

Doesn't look like that worked. Miiight be doing it wrong, since I basically just installed the "DirectX end-user runtime update." Couldn't really find DX10/11 or whatever on the site, it all seems like dev kits and such.

human_error · Nov 13, 2009

Have you gone into the windows 7 action centre and seen if it can find anything? Normally i'd ignore windows built-in tools but the action centre seems to be pretty decent helping to find obscure software errors/compatability issues.

BaconXBits · Nov 13, 2009

human_error said:
Have you gone into the windows 7 action centre and seen if it can find anything? Normally i'd ignore windows built-in tools but the action centre seems to be pretty decent helping to find obscure software errors/compatability issues.

It doesn't have anything except it wants me to set up a backup, which I can't do anyway because it doesn't detect my other two drives for whatever reason (even though I can access them through My Computer).

BaconXBits · Nov 14, 2009

Bump, Valve still hasn't bothered to reply to me (I sent a support request last week), and disabling all of my anti-virus stuff didn't help (worth a try I suppose).

Anyone else have any ideas?

Edit: They just now replied to me suggesting removing anti-spyware and unnecessary processes. Didn't work.

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Memory	Corsair Vengeance 4x8GB DDR3
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All Steam games suddenly not working, help!

BaconXBits

Mussels

Freshwater Moderator

BaconXBits

Wile E

Power User

BaconXBits

human_error

BaconXBits

BaconXBits

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