steam help again plz

hey guys

yesterday i got my friend to buy (my C/C is for emergencies only) two new games from steam and then gift them to me.
straight after he completed the transaction both games appeared in my uninstalled games list and i received two little pop up steam boxes saying i had received gifts at the bottom of this box was a button saying click to receive, when i clicked nothing happened...i figured it was just steam playing-up and exited and restarted steam.
when i went to my uninstalled games list both games where gone, i went to my email and had received two emails from steamstore saying i had received L4D2 and Red Alert3 as gifts,



there was a link to redeem the gift, heres the problem when i try to use the link it doesnt open, firefox gives a strange message ( see attachment) and explorer wont load the page.



im stumped as to how to get these gifts, they arnt in my games list and i cant get them from the email links.
anyone able to shed some light on the situation id be most appreciative.
thanks and take care.

 

It's just a Steam protocol URL (steam://), for whatever reason when you installed Steam you opted out of installing the protocol, you should try re-installing it. But usually it's not necessary, in most cases it's just a steamstore URL, so you can just grab the link (right-click, copy link) and paste it into the browser, swapping steam:// for http://.

Alternatively, you can direct firefox to open that type of URL via Steam.

 

Try just logging into Steam again. I bought my girlfriend Left 4 Dead last week, and she didn't see it in her games list when she logged into Steam. She exited and logged right back in, and it was there.

 

that's strange as i uninstalled and reinstalled it last night and im still experiencing the same problems. i tried to copy and paste and that was the message i got from firefox while explorer gave me the cannot open page message.
could you advise me on how in steam i can get firefox to open the page please.

its been over 24 hours of trying to get it sorted, i have unfortunately tried on numerous occasions logging off and back in.....thanks for the suggestion though

 

Do the games he sent you show as 'Redeemed' on his end under his 'Gifts and Guest Passes'?

If they don't show as redeemed he may need to 'resend' them to you. I've had a few times wherein trying to send my BF some games it's jammed up on multiple deliveries. If I sent them to his steam ID, I had to 'reset' it by choosing the email option and filling it out, then choosing the ID option again to get it to go through.

 

thats exactly what happened the first time i received the gifts, i got them both at the same time and when i clicked 'get gift' nothing happened...i just figured it was a steam freeze issue......i just sent my friend a email asking him to check his account.
thanks for the suggestion
its my first online game purchase so im a little iffy about it all.

 

*nods* Sure thing. Since they're not on your game list anymore, I figured this is a good starting point. Something may have goofed on the initial delivery which can be remedied on his end if that is the case.

 

ok so update...they are back on my game list and when i right-click activate gift the box opens but it still wont go any further than that......



theres some problem with my browsers and steam but i cant work out what it is.....one strange thing i noticed while looking through steam settings is when i clicked system info in steam it shows as windows XP SP2 but im running vista SP2......
i give up

 

Is your Internet Explorer fully up to date?
Have you tried running steam as administrator?

 

im not sure about if my IE is up to date, is there a way to manually update it?
as far as running steam in admin i have the admin settings turned off, so as far as im aware everything runs as admin and doesn't need authenticated.

 

steam gets crazy like that sometimes.
i bought company of heroes tales of valor and it installed. i couldnt play it. then after something like 24 hours it installed the original company of heroes and i still couldnt play it coz it said i entered the wrong serial ( which steam automatically entered mind you) and everything was locked. tried it like 5 times. after another 24 hours the game could run and the tales of valor content was unlocked.
friggin annoying. so if i were you just keep on checking it and try to send steam an email but you know you will just get generic answers like upgrade you browser etc.

 

from the steam wiki:
(change the paths to match your Steam install location)

 

i tried that earlier mate...sorry

 

have you tried setting IE as your default browser? as it seems to be trying to open it in firefox in the screenshot.

 

yeah i tried both browsers mate.....IE gave me the 'not able to open page' message

 

Verify the keys actually exist in your registry, if not, enter them manually.

In the worst case scenario, you can create a shortcut to your Steam.exe, then modify the Target property as follows:

Code:

"<path to your>\Steam.exe" "<link to your gift>"

 

yeap i got it working finally it was a corrupt registry, my friend who got the games for me just sent me his steam.reg and then it worked straight away, so thanks a lot for all your patience guys.....now the downloading begins......