Steam installation errors

This article will describe tips to troubleshoot errors during the installation of one of the indispensable for both gamer and tester, digital distribution services of video games - Steam.

Steam is an online service for digital distribution of the computer games and various software, as well as one of the largest platforms for multiplayer games and a social network for gamers, which was created and maintained by the American video game company Valve.This application has a vast toolkit for a convenient user experience, offering such functions as: installing games and regular updates to the current version of the game, easily customizable library of games in the player's profile, the presence of the function of «Cloud» game saves and voice/text communication between players. This service distributes a huge number of games for Windows, as well as macOS and Linux.

This service is used by testers to install test versions and receive updates to the latest versions of games or other software. During  our courses, you will need to work with this application for one of the homework assignments. Sometimes during the installation of Steam,  some problems or errors can occur, so in this article, we will analyze the most common of them.

The tester can face problems already on the stage of downloading the program from the developer's website. The best option is to download the application with the latest version of the update from the official Steam website. Since when downloading from a third-party site, the installation file can be damaged and you will not be able to install the Steam application correctly.

After following the link, you should see next page:

To download  the Steam you need to click the «Install Steam» button.

There are two things that can happen  at this point:

1. The Steam home page does not load or takes a very long time to load;
2. The Steam application is not loaded

The reason for the cases above  is  an overrunning of the Steam servers. This does not happen often, but it happens at the start of seasonal sales on the service, since the Steam servers cannot withstand a huge flow of users and are, therefore, overloaded. On the Steam Status page, you can see the status of the service servers and find out whether  the problem comes from the developers  and not from the lack of an Internet connection on the user's device.

Now, let's look through  the main problems that arise during the installation of the Steam application and their possible solutions.

Problem №1

The «Not enough space on the hard drive» error 

One of the most common problems is the lack of free memory to install the application on a PC. In this case, the solution is quite simple - you need to free up memory on the computer's hard drive by deleting unnecessary files or applications or during installation, specify the path to another hard drive partition with free space on it. Valve software doesn't take up very much disk space - about 200 Mb.

Steam installation window looks like this:

After the installation, you can enter additional paths for storing games on other partitions of the hard drive using Steam configurations.

To  create new game folders in other sections of the disk, you need to go to the Steam application to the Steam menu and «Settings» submenu, then go to the «Downloads» section and click the «Steam library» folders button.

A window with the folders of the Steam libraries will appear. If you want to  add another folder to the library on another disk, you need to click the "Add library folder" button, specifying the path to the disk folder through the explorer.

Problem №2

Exclamation mark error window shows up

Also one of the most common problems is an error window with a warning icon.

The problem is quite easy to solve, you need to enter the name of the «Steam» folder in the installation path as shown in the image below:

After this operation, the installation process should go through without any problems.

Problem №3

Installation of the application is impossible due to the prohibition that is set on the user's OS

Probably, the thing is that installing prohibition without administrator rights is enabled on the PC. You can solve this problem simply by following  these steps: right-click on the Steam installation file and select the «Run as administrator» menu item.

Problem №4

«Destination Folder Must Be Empty»

During the installation the user can stumble upon the  «Destination Folder Must Be Empty» error: I means that  means the installation folder should not have any files in it. The problem is extremely rare and can be caused by the fact that the user is installing  this application in an earlier selected installing location.

There are 4 methods to solve this problem:

1. Find another place on the PC where you want  to install Steam and delete the folder of the same name.
2. Instead of deleting the folder (as you do in the method #1) you need to move the folder to a location different from the path in the installer on the hard drive.
3. Rename the already existing «Steam» folder.
4. During the installation ofthe application, enter a different path on your hard drive.

Problem №5

The «Steam is already running on this computer» error

During the installation ofSteam a message can appear telling you to close the client. This is probably due to the process of this software being stuck on the PC.

To prevent this problem, you need to do the following:

1. Go to Windows Task Manager and suspend processes related to the Steam program.
2. Go to the «Details» tab in the task manager. Find the tasks related to the Steam service and use the right mouse button to select «End Task».

3. Restart the Steam installer

Problem №6

Cyrillic characters in the installation path.

If the path to the folder that contains Cyrillic characters, the installation process will probably be interrupted. To prevent such cases, you must change the installation path and the destination folder so that they do not contain Cyrillic characters (Example of correct path indication: D:\Games\Steam).

After getting to know all troubleshooting methods mentioned about , you can easily solve most of the errors that both gamers and testers who are starting their work in testing games can face.