Today I downloaded Steam by Valve for Windows XP for the first time on my freshly reformatted computer. Everything seemed to go fine until I got the error “Cannot contact the Steam Network, please try later” which was funny because both FireFox and IE were connecting to the internet just fine.
I thought the issue might have been on Valve’s end and waited for a bit… but I soon got inpatient and decided to figure out what was wrong. I searched online and found a fix that worked in a snap.
In some cases the cannot contact Steam Network issue may actually be on their end but this is how you can check and possibly fix it immediately as I did.
- close Steam and any other running programs then go to My Computer C:Program FilesSteam
- locate the file called ClientRegistry.blob (or similar file)
- delete the file (don’t worry, you can restore it from the trash bin later if this doesn’t work)
- launch Steam again and the problem should be fixed! Now it will run properly and a new ClientRegistry.blob file will automatically be created
I’m not sure why this problem happens but there are several threads out there with lots of people experiencing the same thing. My copy of Windows XP was running on BootCamp on my MacBook Pro so I thought that might be part of the reason? Hope this helps!
thnx ! it really works!!! wat a weird fix btw
Make sure you restart your cmoputer after delteting the ClientRegistry.blob file. This worked for me.
it really worked on me.
I had to remove ClientRegistry.blob 4 times before it would work. Thanks for the TiP!!
It worked. Thanx EH!