None of my Steam games will launch after upgrading to Windows 7

I just upgraded my G51vx to Windows 7 64 bit HP from Vista 64 bit HP. However none of my Steam games launch. I thought it was a problem with the upgrade so I reinstalled Vista and did the upgrade again but I'm still getting the same problem.

The AVP demo just comes up with the message saying it's stopped working.

When I try running Shattered Horizon, I get the 'Preparing to launch Shattered Horizon...' message which fades away but then nothing happens. The same thing happens for the Shadowgrounds demo.

In CSS, I get a message saying

Unable to load c:\program files(x86)\games\steam\steamapps\myusername\counte r-strike source\bin\filesystem_steam.dll

In Titan Quest a box comes up saying 'failed to find steam'

Braid is the only one that seems to work but I get no sound...

All these problems yet I have no idea what the hec is going on..

I installed Crysis Warhead (a non steam game) and it run without problems..

I tried to right click>properties>run as administrator but that doesn't do anything..

Anyone know how I can resolve this? Has anyone else had this problem?

 

You come across these sorts of issues when upgrading OS's. Thats why its best to do a clean install. You can try uninstalling and reinstalling steam and the games.

If your going to re-install Vista and upgrade again. Make sure you install Steam and the games after youve fully updated Win7

 

When you say clean install, do you mean like a reformat and reinstall of windows 7? Because I tried that and the installation didn't progress (stayed at 0%) so I thought maybe it's because it's an upgrade disc (from Asus via free upgrade offer)? I thought upgrade discs are only for upgrading? Either way, my installation was as clean as it could be as I didn't install anything until Windows 7 was installed. I restored Vista, then straight away upgraded to Windows 7. Installed my security programs then installed Steam. And I've done this twice now. Same problems. I don't think another reinstallation is going to make a difference since there was nothing I did wrong in the first 2 cases.

Oh and I tried reinstalling Steam but I'm still getting the same problem.

 

hmm i see.

Paste this in your browser

See which tests fails.

 

Ok I did that and everything says passed except this

Background Processes: Failed
The following background processes were found on your system. Please try exiting or uninstalling them, and see if that resolves your issue
Process: taskhost.exe
kontiki spyware / adware.
Severity: Low

I googled this file and it says it's an integral part of the system and to leave it alone..

 

Edit: Ok I managed to get the clean install working. Had to wait for a while but it finally started installing. The bad news though is that I'm still getting the problem. I don't understand why I seem to be the only one here getting the problem when others have the exact same computer with the exact same W7 upgrade..

 

Possibly relevant:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=993872&highlight=g73

Others have had similar problems with Windows 7 and have apparently traced it to the Creative emulation software. The sound issues here suggest your problem might be the same. The simplest (temporary) solution offered there is to turn off the bass boost option in the creative software before loading steam (see the last post in that thread). Aside from uninstalling the creative software, I haven't seen any permanent solutions yet ... I guess people are waiting on Creative for a fix.

 

^
What he said. The creative faux audigy software is in conflict with Steam. On my G72, whenever i tried to run Steam my system would completely freeze.

After I uninstalled, the problem went away.

 

I don't think I even have any creative software. I only have Realtek HD Audio Manager.

I did another clean install but this time as soon as W7 installed, I installed the graphics driver and then installed steam. All the games worked! I thought it was maybe one of the drivers or asus applications from the driver disc that was causing the problem. So I installed them all slowly, making sure the Steam games ran fine after installing a few at a time. After all of them were installed, my Steam games were still running fine.

Now, this is where things act up again. My G51 has 2 hard drives, both split into 2 partitions, so 4 partitions total. HDD 1 = C/D drives, HDD 2 = E/F drives. Every time I have installed W7, for some weird reason the D and E drives switch so that D becomes E and E becomes D. I don't know why it does this. Anyway, so after the latest clean install, I deleted some stuff (just some of my stuff which has nothing to do with Steam) from the D drive (Which is actually the 2nd hard drive's E drive). As soon as I did this I tried running my Steam games and the problem came back! Now when I think about the previous installations, I kept changing the drives letters back to their original letters through disk management. So now I'm wondering if maybe touching those E or D partitions have anything to do with this. Why it would is beyond me but that's the only link I can see so far.

I'm going to try another clean install...

 

Okay go to control panel and go into the "Hardware and Sound" then go into manage audio devices.
Right click the realtek and click properties. If there is a Sound Blaster Tab, go into that and click disable enchancements.

 

This is all I have. Disabling Natural Bass doesn't do anything.



In the enhancements tab, none of the enhancements were even ticked.

 

this happened to me with the bioshock 1 demo, but tf2 worked. update your directx software on the microsoft website and you should be good

 

Thanks. CSS is working now but I'm still getting the same problems with the other games

 

Try this, take your steamapps folder and copy it outside of your Steam program folder. Then download the Steam app from Steam's website and install as normal, then copy your original steamapps folder on top of your new one. Then try running Steam.

 

Hmm well I did another clean install of W7 but this time I combined my 2nd harddrive's partitions so I've just got one. This makes no sense but strangely everything is working fine now. I'm running all the programs and drivers as before. The only thing I've done differently for now is disabled windows update because it kept installing updates so it made it hard for me to try and pinpoint what driver or application (if any) was causing the problem. I'll enable it soon once I've run the computer a bit more and if the problem comes back I'll report back here.

 

Found the solution to the bugger!

The problem started happening again. That message popped up when starting steam saying that I shouldn't run it in compatibility mode (even though I wasn't) and says to press OK to quit steam or cancel to ignore the message and continue. When I press cancel to contine and try to open the games the same issues came back. The last program I installed was Spyware Doctor, my anti-spyware/anti-virus program. I uninstalled it and tada, problem gone. Guess I'm going to have to find a new antivirus program cause it seems to conflict with Steam somehow in W7.