issue with steam on win8 DEMANDING to be online and NOT allowing offline

Have you followed the steps for playing offline in Steam?

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-agcb-2555

Try deleting ClientRegistry.blob file in Steam folder

Shouldn't you be asking this on a steam forum?  Or maybe to steam support?  

This way Stardock support can say "But it works for me" without retribution.  :)

Well, I've tried all the suggestions (including the linked Steam forum page), and LH still starts Steam up in normal mode.  And I still get that message about Steam being not connected and requiring it to reconnect to use again, blah blah.

I haven't found any way of starting up LH in Offline Mode.

Had an outage early this morning, so tested it out.

Tried to connect online, it couldn't, asked if I wanted to go offline, and it did.

I've had it give me problems in the past- the best solution would be for Stardock to allow the .exe for starting it without starting the Steam client.

(or create a command line parameter for it)

Any chance this is due to LH being in beta? I believe FE required connection while in beta as well (pre-steam beta.)

my issue is from both the steam desktop icon AND lh, but as steam itself refuses to let me go into offline mode I think the problem IS steam itself.

no I am only using the windows 8 firewall,

the antivirus does NOT have a firewall,

the usename AND password are remembered,

both steam AND lh are the latest version and fully updated

and on one of my win7 machines(that does also have both steam and lh), I CAN play offline, BUT not on the win8,

and the win7 even has a third party firewall, the same antivirus with the same settings.

harpo

edit additional info, when I tried to start stem in online mode with NO internet connection, steam claimed that steam had never been used on the computer, (a load of bullshit, as I had just done a verify the install of lh when online only a few minutes before)

I am having the same exact issue on the Windows 7 OS. I suspect its the following.

When Steam is online, starting the FE:LH will cause two series of installation of installation that will hang. Will need to force exit the installation. This will let the game FE:LH to run. Unfortunately the side effect is that Steam thinks that the game is still not installed properly & hence will not allow you to go to offline mode.

My next step will be to verify the integrity the integrity of the local game cache & start the game again. Hopefully this will allow the installation to be successfully completed.

I am not sure whether this is the same issue that you are experiencing but wanted to share with you my troubleshooting process that I currently going through. Currently I don't have access to the PC now as I am reading this on the forum.

Good luck & would appreciate if you could share your troubleshooting process if you managed to solve it.

UPDATE 28 Mar 2013: Re installed the FE:LH. Updated Steam. Am now able to go offline mode. Goodluck.

Hehehe, isn't Steam great? Where are all the Steam fanbois with their "it's NOOOO problem playing offline!" when you need them, hm?

They can't reply to you because they are all offline

Nah......all of us (STEAM fanboi's) are happily playing our STEAM games, of course since I happened to come here.......I might as well say........

"sucks to be you guys.....!"  .......for whom STEAM never seems to work.   Oh well......

hehe 

@Harpo,

How many STEAM games do you have installed?   I have read elsewhere that some people have had success by removing everything out of the 'appcache' and 'userdata' folders in STEAM.  WARNING! :  Be aware I might only do this if LH was the only STEAM game you have installed on that machine as it may have unintended consequences for other installed games.  (ie.  resetting keybindings and game options to default etc.).

We're too busy being tech literate and not having issues with such simple "problems".

a bit of additional info,

I have tried the compatability troubleshooter (no success in getting offline mode to work)

I then tried giving ALL users/modes full permissions for the steam desktop shortcut (no success)

then I tried giving all user permissions to the actual steam.exe in its folder (no success)

then I tried logging out and logging back in (note thesetting to save username/pw IS ON) (no success)

checked for updates to steam, none,

even tried to start steam with ethernet unplugged, then tried with ALL network adapters disabled (all no success)

googled for similiar issues, many found the few that say they fixed it all point to steam updates fixing the issue, but have not for me.

I am posting here because the ONLY games that I purchased that use OR require steam ARE by/published BY STARDOCK ie rebeliron and lh and based upon this experience I will NOT be buying ANY steam only game EVER AGAIN!

harpo

You'd think after so many years Steam would have fixed this issue.

The thing to do to avoid the problem is:

1) Always exit steam before turning off your computer. Don't leave it to windows to shut it down.

2) Keep a text file called steam.cfg containing the lines

BootStrapperInhibitAll=enable
ForceOfflineMode=enable

This should force steam to start in offline mode providing you followed (1).

there's a steam update today.. does it help?

All platforms:
- Removed an error message that incorrectly blocked offline mode

as of my last post I had not received any steam updates since installing lh, but had received a steam update before downloading and installing lh approx 2 days ago, and am still getting the problem.

rahal, where should the steam.cfg be located?

harpo

It isn't a problem playing offline.  Doing it right now.  Flipped steam into offline mode, turned off my wifi, and LH loaded.

Windows 7 Home Premium

napean, I did mention that on xp & win7 that I could go offline, BUT on win8 I could NOT and STILL can't.

the_monk, sorry, I did not see your reply, but lh is the only steam game on the comp, and will try this later, but do not really see wht this could do to get the steam window to go to offline mode(and steam does shut itself down before when starting during the attempt to work offline and then get the error,

and I usually run games from a shortcut on the desktop, or very rarely from the start menu/screen and NEVER from inside other programs.

harpo

in the steam directory, top level

in theory it should let you use steam without having to go into offline before you logged out last time (providing steam shut down properly)

-- just checked and this still works. No idea why this isn't sticked on steam forums, it's essential knowledge if you want to use steam with an internet outage or whatever

Thanks rahal.