f13.net

Executive summary is that I upgraded my OS and reinstalled Steam over itself.  I have managed to work out most of the problems (deleted most everything) except with DoW: Winter Assault.  It is stuck at the point where it begins to install but does not report progress.  Even more fun, deleting local content also removes DoW Gold, which takes about 1.5 hours to get back.  I can run DoW Gold at the moment but I'd rather not fuck it again.  Anyone have any tips here?

What if you double-click it as if to run it?  Sometimes Steam doesn't believe that I want to install a game until I actually try to play it.

Last time I did that, nothing happened, although that was DoWG.  There wasn't anything running on the system, either, it just died.  I restarted Steam, reinstalled DoWG and it works now and looks installed.  I haven't tried running Winter Assault directly yet since this last restart/reinstall where Gold works but that's on the list of things to do to narrow this down.  Previous experience has me thinking it will enter perma-update but who knows?  It's flaky as fuck.  I was going to rename the game dir, which is the last thing I did before I last reinstalled Gold, but there does not seem to be one.

Can you uninstall Winter Assault through the Add or Remove Programs control panel?

This is something to try, I had not actually looked in there.  Will report back this evening.

When you uninstall a Steam App from the Add/Remove programs, it tends to pop open steam and initiate the "Remove local content" right click bit.

That is what I expect to happen, if it is even in there, but I'm at the Scientific Method portion of the troubleshooting wherein I move one lever and watch for changes in the system.  I'd like to try the Comparative Test where I find some dude who has them both installed and working since I don't know where Winter Assault actually lives so I can give it a neckpunch.  Doesn't seem to have it's own folder.

I get the feeling I'm going to eventually use the Scorched Earth Method.

I had problems installing Winter Assault from the CD's. I ended up having to find a workaround to it that got the game running, but it wouldn't show up in the Add/Remove Programs and the multiplayer portion of DOW didn't recognize that I had Winter Assault installed (and thus couldn't play Imp. Guard). Not very helpful, unfortunately, but even the CD version was fucked.

If worst comes to worst, you could hassle Valve tech support.

Dawn of War Gold is in, uh, Programs and Features (W7), but not Winter Assault so it's not even getting that far into the install.  I'm going to have to think about this before I do either of call Valve support or nuke Steam.  Reinstalling it over itself was probably the original failure.

Isn't it "If worse comes to worst..."?

I never liked that phrase.

I've been having what sounds like a similar problem downloading the demo for Grand Ages: Rome. It starts, but then quickly goes to Download Starting.. and nothing happening. It downloads about half the content and then hangs. Pausing and Resuming updating does nothing.

 :why_so_serious: (http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19980713)

When you said "Upgraded my OS" you didn't mention that was putting a beta version of Windows on it.  Shit, I'm amazed Steam works at all.  I think Valve support will just laugh at you.

--Dave

Yes.  Besides that, there is no "Dawn of War" in the game pulldown, only Dawn of War 2.  Ahem, Dawn of DRM I think, based on what my friends are telling me.  Anyway, I figure getting support for this is not going to happen from either Valve (no response so far) or Relic, the rat-bastards.  I'll be in WDW for a week starting tomorrow, but when I get back I think I am going to nuke Steam from orbit and start fresh.  Or just not play Winter Assault. :oh_i_see:

As for W7, I have not found much of anything that won't run.  One exception could be Windows games from GameTap because their third-party encryption driver does not work on a 64-bit OS, but that's not actually a W7 problem.  I just installed OpenOffice.org 3.0 and it's fine so far.  Naturally I don't expect to get real support for anything on a beta OS, despite this.