This is what happens yesterday.

I get a good present from one of my friend who buys me a game - Half Life: Anthology. It is a package that includes Half-Life, Half-Life Blue Shift, Half-Life Opposing Force, and Counter Strike. I get it home, and I install it on my PC. The PC is not a beast but it is a decent system and I remember Half-Life demo not being very system hungry.

It takes few minutes to install, where it first installs the Steam engine and then goes ahead to install the four games. I do not have an internet connection at home, but I should be able to play three titles out of the four. Anyway, it gets installed, and then I try to run, and that is it. I get frustrated.

Why?

I get the following error window:

Steam.exe (main exception): Unable to load steam.dll

I search my entire hard disk for the particular DLL and do not find it. I even search it on the Installation CD and do not find it. I call up another of my acquaintance and ask him if he knows a solution.

First of all, he laughs at me because I spent bucks on buying a legal copy of the game. Over that he says that he never had such problems with his 'acquired' copy of the game. What should I say? I never accepted to run pirated games because I know the amount of work it goes into building the game.

Anyway, I go to the Valve Technical Support Page, register myself and put in a Trouble Ticket. I have not yet got a reply, but I think it is due to the difference in the Time Zone.

This has me wondering though....

Hm, no clue although I'll blame Steam for now because I hate that software and think it is the problem for all in this world... Ok not really BUT it's still a pain in the ass at numerous times.

Have you tried a simple google for this problem? Just seems like something that, if it's common at all, it will be well documented as HL/CS fanboys are pretty intense people when it comes to making their games run properly :|

Another thing you may have tried but didn't mention was reinstalling it? Scanning a cd probably wouldn't find the missing dll since it's likely compressed into some package with numerous other files. Uninstalling and reinstalling may fix whatever error caused the problem in the first place. Also it could help since if the anthology works like HL2 does then steam needs to "unlock" files when you run it the first tme, and if this crapped out mid run who knows what kinds of issues it could have caused haha. So yes, google and reinstall are my reccomendations. Good luck.

I have reinstalled it a couple of times, so that can be ticked out of the question. Now that you said, I did search the Google for it, and there seems to be a steam.dll file for download. I am going to try it, but I am crossing my fingers.

Should not Steam atleast give the basic DLLs like steam.dll when they are giving it in a package that someone would buy and install it the first time?

Anyway, I am yet looking out.

Oh they should, but it's steam, so who knows haha. (Again, I'm just bitter about how horrid steam was originally when it first came out, don't mind me). I've actually never heard of someone having trouble getting a valve product installed so it's interesting. I've heard of issues getting HL2 running once installed for a couple reasons, but nothing else really.

Hi,

I don't know why people don't use Google. I did and I directly found a GUIDE (!) to solve this. It's in German though.
They talk about the exact thing (steam.dll not found) and offer some solutions, I'll translate:
• Try the official solution at steampowered.com.
– if that link should go offline for some reason: delete the file c:\program files\valve\steam\clientregistry.blob (usual location) and restart
• they say there might be trouble if you have bandwidth eater running in background (like eMule, etc.)
• allow steam access in your firewall
• open these ports in your router (if you have one) UDP 1200 (used for friends service), UDP 27000 to 27015 inclusive, TCP 27020 to 27039 inclusive
• run virus check, adware remover etc.
• sometimes it might help to just fetch the steam.dll from a freind or reinstall (see link).
• seems to work for some to install the cached client (at this FTP server

so, this should be enough, guess you'll be able to fix it now.

ruben

I run macs now and pretty much out of the PC gaming arena...although I am seriously thinking about getting a cheap PC that can run Falcon 4.0: Allied Force...

At any rate, all i've read and heard about the whole steam process was that it had issues. Lots and lots of issues all around. I know very few people who did not have some kind of problem with the steam registration process.

I understand how they want to keep people from pirating their games, but there has to be a better way other than ticking off your fans...

I got the steam.dll from some googled page, and placed it in the directory. Then it worked, atleast it did not say that it could not load steam.dll.

I did not realize that one needs internet connection to play the game. I do not have an internet connection at home - so that means I would not be able to play the game that I bought legally!

That could be the problem.. i don't see how you can even login to steam to play your games.. otherwise you might want to try a full reinstall of steam.
Uninstall it first (including all the steam games) then search around in the registry for the steam keys/values and remove them. Now install the games but if it happens again i'd say it's definately because of no internet connectivity.
Try the game on one of your friends computers and see if it runs, try it with the internet and let it update etc..

-HellFire

You can somehow put steam into an offline mode but I have no clue how... I know I played steam games on my comp when I was at home where I didn't have net access on my own comp only the other comp... so it must be possible. I'd suggest checking their support pages to find out what the deal with offline mode is.

Ow! The support gave a reply that was something way off!
My installation disk did have the steam.dll missing as I said earlier, and I got it by googling it, and then when I tried to play the game, it definetly told that I need to be connected to the internet to play the game.
Hey Jeigh, do tell me if you remember how you got to play the game without internet connection.

Anyway, I have also asked at their support forum.

This post has been edited by Vyoma: Aug 24 2006, 12:31 PM