Steam fails to update (Since the 29th'ish)

Well looks like valve might have done it again!

On launching Steam recently it fire off the usual "Updating Platform" dialog prior to displaying the Steam application itself, this usually involves download itself i.e. Steam.exe to a Steam directory and naming it "SteamTmp.exe" or "SteamNew.exe" or in my case both!

For me, once the progress gets to 26% Steam appears to want to launch itself, assumidly the new one, and finish of the Steam update. Expect that for me Steam doesn't close down the first "updating" copy so i get the following dialog:

Steam is already running
You may only run one copy of Steam at a time.

Which is kinda ghey.

I've tried the standard crap with Steam of deleting ClientRegistry.blob and all that bollocks but still end up with this issue.

If anybody else is having this problem or knows of a fix it'd be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

 

Steam has really turned into a piece of shit for me since these round of updates began. My steam will randomly crash at least once every 5-10 mins no matter what I'm doing.

 

I dunno how everyone has problems with steam - for me, its a perfectly good piece of software. No issues with it...

 

rampantandroid: Steam-user poster child (and lucky!)

Ok i should of mentioned my platform in first-post: Vista 64, 2GB, 2x7900 GTs w/SLI, AMD 4400 (emphasis on the Vista!)

I did eventually get this issue to work, the solution: "Run as Administrator"

Yes kiddies yet another piece of software not given the 10 minutes of testing it would of required to show-up this bug.

The issue with Vista, by default, is this new thing called UAC - User Account Control and to be fair is a genuine and proper attempt by microsoft to limit stupid software/malware from doing bad/malicious stuff.

Now in Steam's case when an "Updating Platform" is necessary, part of this process is to download a new "Steam.exe" which it always does first thing and will actually restart *itself* during the update to download the rest of the new content, hence in my case the first "26%" is steam.exe executable.

Now the issue comes when Steam.exe needs to do a quick switch-a-roo by first executing the freshly downloaded steam client, which is temporarily named "SteamTmp.exe". Once this is launched SteamTmp.exe then kills it's parent, Steam.exe, continues to download remaining crap and as it's last act deletes the old Steam.exe and clones it's self to a new file: Steam.exe

The problem: Put simply under vista, vista doesn't allow a child executable to kill it's parent *if* the parent executable has only "user" level permissions which it's child inherits. "Run(ing) as Administrator" gives Steam.exe and therefore "SteamTmp.exe" enough permissions to do what is intended.

Now i believe you should *not* need to do this as i friend of mine states that in the Vista API the parent can grant explicit "kill me if you like" permissions if the programmer intends it.

Anyway that's my 2euros.

PS: I'd like to say that this should not be an excuse to turn off UAC, like so many do, to make the badness go away. Doing so essentially is like running stuff in XP - everything runs as with Administrator permissions. Coming from a Unix/Linux background you should always be conservative with what programs need in term of memory, storage and permissions that way you'll be safe in the knowledge that you'll be running a highly efficient system, the primary reason Linux can run a small mail server ISA-based hardware, no problem! (Christ, there are probably people here that weren't born when ISA (before PCI) was around!)

 

Windows XP 64, dual core, not a single problem with Steam on my end.


All my game clients though, tend to simply 'die out' in the middle of connecting to a server. This happens every two or three games and I have to do a full game restart. Very annoying.