CSS, L4D, TF2, and all of my other SDK-based games haven't worked properly for at least a month now. Valve support was zero help, so I'm trying this board out.

I can open up the game, look through the server list and even see who's in the server, but when I try to connect, it gives me a generic error message. "Connection timed out after 4 retries."

I've tried DMZ, forwarding all ports, turning off my firewall and any other program that would interfere, uninstalling steam and my games completely (twice), and even switching operating systems. The thing that pisses me off is the fact that my brothers' pc, sitting 5 feet away from me, on the same router, runs the games perfectly fine. So it's not a network issue, it's something wrong with my pc. I've tried everything I can honestly think of. Hopefully this thread will bring up a fresh idea.

This may be a problem with your pc's network card. Is it wireless or wired?

I don't know fuck about hardware, mind you. I think it's wired.

Well, it doesn't seem to be a networking problem, because you can go online, see whos in the servers etc. So it seems to be a software problem to me. It could e that steam is raping you for some reason. Try unistalling and reinstalling one of the games to see if that does anything.

Your network card is the most goddamn likely option to troubleshoot, since you've tried everything software related. Get your brother to help you, it seems like that is the problem.

I may have not made it clear in my first post, I uninstalled steam and all of my games, wiped steam completely off my pc, and reinstalled all of it. Even with everything default it doesn't work.


I doubt I'll get him to help me. Nobody on here knows about network cards.

Wait, how did soundcards get into this?

my mind was miles away, I meant netcard. :s

Maybe it's a new problem now.

Now back to srs bsns. are you running steam any sort of compatibility mode?

Try deleting everything in your steam folder except steamapps (steamapps contain all your games and other stuff you've downloaded/purchased etc.) , clientregistry.blob, and steam.exe. This will force steam to update itself. Thus, possibly updating it's connection problems and others. You could also try finding the registry key that has a path that leads to steam.exe.

Check and see if steam and all it's games are set to read only, if it is. Uncheck it.
that's all I can think of atm.

Also, before deleting everythign in the steam folder besides the ones specified. Besure to make a copy of clientregistry.blob AND rename it. place the copy in a folder for future use or w/e.

Good luck

Do you have something like Daemon tools running?

Also I used to have problems with some games when winamp was running.

Fixed it for him.

Whoever created his DMZ hooked it up to the wrong computer terminal's IP address. You can close this now, kids.