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Great...now Steam won't let me play the damn game!

Helmut_AUT

Grizzled Veteran
Dec 14, 2005
559
0
And people wonder why I hate Steam.

I got RO around April 1st when the boxed version arrived from my american friend. So, now it's about 11 days later, in which I regulary played the game.

But today, after booting up my home system, Steam tells me "The game is currently unavalable, please try again later".

Yeah, right. I got all the game files sitting here on my hard drive. I paid my damn 40 bucks for it. I have an american friend waiting to hop on a server with me.

But some damn piece of DRM software tells me I can't play now.

Great, thanks Steam. Thanks Valve. Thanks Tripwire.
 
I looked into this sticky, and all it says is that you might have this problem when running with a limited user account in Windows, because steam loads a system driver. It's linked from the news on the front page of this website, and that was the first place I looked.

I have full administration rights on my maschine, so this fix does not apply.

Doesn't work in offline mode, either, BTW...just tried disabling my cable connection and loading the game that way, no dice.

So, is this the cool technical advantage Steam is supposed to offer? The fact that I can't get the damn game to start despite not having changed anything on my system all the last days?
 
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http://www.redorchestragame.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2924

This Game is currently unavailable. Please try again another time.
Fix 1 - process already run and needs to be "killed" first:
1. Quit Steam
2. Ctrl+Alt+Del -> Go to Processes (second tab) -> Find RedOrchestra.exe -> End process
3. Open Steam
4. Launch Red Orchestra
Fix 2 - Kerio Personal Firewall users:
1. Configuration > Network security > Find steam.exe and redorchestra.exe entries in the list and erase; choose ok
2. Manually create new entries for them or if you are using interactive mode wait for popup when restarting steam / roo
 
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I moved this thread over to support where it belongs. Also, Steam related issues need to addressed through the Steam support channel. Essentially, if you don't see the RO splash screen, go to Steam for support. And please don't take this as we don't care if it is a Steam problem. Rather we are not experts on Steam, and Valve is, so they are better equipped to help you with issues stemming from Steam itself.
 
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I already checked into their so-called "support channel" at steampowered.com.

Neither the FAQ nor the forum search over there answer my questions.

Basically this is the same system configuration as on Sunday evening, when I was playing with a friend. Then I shut down the system just fine, didn't boot it yesterday because I was out of my apartment all day, and today I booted - and RO won't launch anymore.

I do not have Zone Alarm.
I do not have Kerio Firewall.
I do have Admin Privileges on my maschine.

No process (neither Steam nor RO) are currently running.

I just told Steam to verify the game files - and when I then tried to launch RO, got a blue screen of dead with a message about ntfs.sys, which seems to be the NTFS File System driver. Thankfully it didn't kill my maschine outright.

I already restarted the PC a few times.

I also removed, tried without, and then added the -ro beta switch to my RO shortcut which I had used to load the beta patch (which was working without problems on Sunday).

All I see now is that, depending if I add the switch or not, Steam is updating RO, and then I get the message "Game unavalable".

But nothing in the official support FAQ helps me here.
 
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Okay, for some unknown reason, it's now working again.

Basically I don't know why. I restarted my system a few times, verified the game files (thankfully the BSOD that followed did not destroy my windows system install), rebooted a few more times, and now it works again.

Sorry, but this STEAM software is bull****. I just wasted 40 minutes of my precious rare spare time to get a game to run on the SAME maschine with the SAME configuration where it ran flawless on sunday. All because some little monkey-like-stupid DRM application decided "No Helmut, you ain't gonna play for now".

So basically now I know that RO is a not a stable application avalable to me when I want to play, rather I'm at the mercy of an extensive server network administrated by Valve who will decide, on a whim, if I may or may not enjoy the software I paid for.

If I could RO would go back for a refund now.
 
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you got a BSOD after verifying your files?

then im sorry but im going to have to question the stability of your machine.
i havent had any BSOD's with steam, not even after verifying files. nor has the game ever been unavailable to me, or most others for that matter.

getting a random BSOD usualy means there is a serious issue, specialy if its during or right after your computer having to do hard work (like verifying file integrity)

are you overclocked, and if so have you tested that overclock with a programe like prime95 or at the verry least memtest?
the fackt windows boots is by no means a indication that your OC is stable.

other then that update system/chipset drivers.
 
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This is a stable and basically "new" maschine - delivered to me on 23th December, built with hand-picked components from the same retailer who builds the maschines for the 50 user network I'm administrating. This is not a walmart system, but a professional box.

Since then, all I did was to add some software (just about 6 games and 5 or 6 webdesign/programming tools) and that's it. Oh, I defraged once. There's no software firewall, no spyware, no adware, no virus scanner.

I've earned my money in the IT business fixing computer errors now for over 5 years, on everthing from Win95 to Server2003. I know my systems in and out.

And no, it isn't overclocked. Neither the CPU nor the Card.

The only thing I can assume is that the steamdrv.sys or whatever it's called, which is loaded to access the .gcf file structure, somehow interfered with the file system driver for NTFS.

Whatever the cause of the BSOD, the first "Game unavalable" shouldn't even have happened. I booted into the absolutly same configuration I ran on sunday when the game worked.

Basically this just tells me Steam is not a stable way to play this game. There is absolutly no reason why it should fail without me changing anything on my system and then suddenly it works again for no reason at all.
 
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Helmut_AUT said:
This is a stable and basically "new" maschine - delivered to me on 23th December, built with hand-picked components from the same retailer who builds the maschines for the 50 user network I'm administrating. This is not a walmart system, but a professional box.

Not to hit up your post here with critisizm... but just because this person(s) made machines for a 50 user network you admin, means that they can't have made some type of mistake? We're all human... human error could come into play here.

I personally, have had ZERO issues with Steam. I've been using it since HL2 days when I bought the Silver Pack, so I've played all sorts of games and had no problems at all.

Steam is about as stable as it needs to be. If you are having issues this is what I suggest you look at first:

-Operator error
-Equipment error (computer)
-Network error (forst at your computer then at the source by phone call)
-Program error (Steam)

People like to (not saying this is what you're doing, it's what I've seen on these forums)... blame the easiest way out, and that's Steam (or even the Tripwire Staff... not as often though). There's no Steam rep here to defend themselves, and it's a program. So people think, error = program fault. Sometimes it REALLY is more than meets the eye.
 
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Krueger...

First, no simple hardware error can simple explain why Steam suddenly says "Game unavalable", which is a Software Error Message. A hardware error may explain the BSOD, but since this is the first one I got since buying the maschine, I think I would have more BSODs if the RAM or the Motherboard, for example, was faulty.

Operator error is right out, because the "operator" (me) didn't change a thing since the last time the game ran without problems. I had more than week of regular, stable game time with RO:OST, and I haven't changed settings at all. So any sudden "unavalability" of the STEAM application points towards a problem with the steam server, not to a bad user mistake.

Network error - yes, perhabs, but I run a hardware router that hasn't changed config either, everthing else worked (email, www etc.) so why should I assume a network error.

So what's left? Steam client. If anything else remains the same like the last working configuration, then it's fairly safe to assume the error is not on my end. It is not very assuring to know that a game I paid good money for can be "unavalable" from one day to the next, just like that. Without this useless steam application the possible causes of the problem could be traced down to my own maschine, but not with an application that works trough the internet. The error potential of such a thing is much bigger.

I wish I could read those steam-output logs, they would explain what happened. But yeah, they are encrypted so...bad luck I guess.
 
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Thanks for trying to help.

I went to the steampowered.com forums and tried to sign up there, but it needs "activation by a moderator". Where do I submit an incident report? A function of Steam itself?

Also, when I use STEAM to click "technical support" the default FAQ pages pops up, but I can't find the "ask a question" tab. I guess that's only for registered users. How idiotic is that. Technical Support needs to be fast and painless, not about making your customers jump trough as many hoops as possible before they can ask a direct question.
 
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