Swirl
28-11-2007, 05:52 PM
I run steam off my external hard drive so i can play on a lot of different computers. Yesterday night Vista Parental Controls... switched? me out (at 11) when i was playing portal. The portal process was still running when i was... switched out - i had no chance to close it.
When you reach the end of your time limit in Vista Parental Controls it automatically uses the switch user process, not the actual log out process (which is probably a good thing, seeing as you should not lose data and can carry on next time you are allowed to use the computer).
However, with no prospect of me going on the computer again until morning, i just pressed the shut down computer button. (mistake?)
Two hours later my mum came to use the computer, and it was still on the 'shutting down computer' screen . She knew that i had stopped using the computer two hours previously, so she [I]held down the power button until the computer switched off.
Anyway, today i opened the steam login screen (this worked) and typed my password in - everything was normal up until 'connecting steam account...' at which point the error message 'Could not connect to steam network. This could be due to a problem with your Internet connection, or with the steam network. Please visit www.steampowered.com for more info.' comes up.
I tried a restart, same error. I have looked at the firewall and steam, hl2launcher, hl2 etc are allowed. I moved the hard drive to a different computer and tried logging in there (zonealarm specifically asked whether to allow steam - i allowed it to run) and got the same error. However this computer is under the same router, but i don't think that my router has it's own firewall.
So what i'm asking is what should be my course of action. Should i delete my steam folder and completely reinstall steam (which i was about to do before i thought of asking here), or should i do something no doubt more clever with my existing steam program. HALP PLOX!
[edit] Oh, and www.steampowered.com reports nothing wrong with the status, and i have had a look on steam community, and many people are currently playing games (so it's just me)
When you reach the end of your time limit in Vista Parental Controls it automatically uses the switch user process, not the actual log out process (which is probably a good thing, seeing as you should not lose data and can carry on next time you are allowed to use the computer).
However, with no prospect of me going on the computer again until morning, i just pressed the shut down computer button. (mistake?)
Two hours later my mum came to use the computer, and it was still on the 'shutting down computer' screen . She knew that i had stopped using the computer two hours previously, so she [I]held down the power button until the computer switched off.
Anyway, today i opened the steam login screen (this worked) and typed my password in - everything was normal up until 'connecting steam account...' at which point the error message 'Could not connect to steam network. This could be due to a problem with your Internet connection, or with the steam network. Please visit www.steampowered.com for more info.' comes up.
I tried a restart, same error. I have looked at the firewall and steam, hl2launcher, hl2 etc are allowed. I moved the hard drive to a different computer and tried logging in there (zonealarm specifically asked whether to allow steam - i allowed it to run) and got the same error. However this computer is under the same router, but i don't think that my router has it's own firewall.
So what i'm asking is what should be my course of action. Should i delete my steam folder and completely reinstall steam (which i was about to do before i thought of asking here), or should i do something no doubt more clever with my existing steam program. HALP PLOX!
[edit] Oh, and www.steampowered.com reports nothing wrong with the status, and i have had a look on steam community, and many people are currently playing games (so it's just me)