'STEAM GUARD' woes, Please help!

ive had this what a pain, leme do some reading, but ultimatly i had to get into steam and then deactivate that nonsense.

edit. ok from what i remeber, i had to wait practically a day to get that authorisation but... i did manage to get in. in the steam help website there an area that explains what to do. im sure i deleted alot of the steam files, not folders, then update it and somehow i got back in before those emails krept in

[CharveL]

Although it is probably just some rare Steam weirdness, it sounds almost to me like someone hacked your account.

[RCAF_FB_Orville]

Originally Posted by CharveL

Although it is probably just some rare Steam weirdness, it sounds almost to me like someone hacked your account.

Thanks for the replies Ali and CharveL (I use your BoBII TrackIR profile as a template mate, very good ) Yes, that is a distinct possibility CharveL, but equally given that Ali says it took a whole day for them to sort it out and get in touch with the 'Steam Guard code' his side, it is also possible that steam support is simply rubbish.

I have taken all their recommended 'security precautions' etc, down to the letter, including email verification etc. So, we'll see. 'Hope for the best, expect the worst, and take what comes'. Words to live by.

[JG52Krupi]

Sure your just not checking the right email account!

[RCAF_FB_Orville]

lol....Aye Krupi, deffo the right one (I'm getting automated 'bot' responses from Steam and a link to my questions, which confirms they have been registered but no answers from staff yet......6hrs on.)

'One is not amused', lol.

[tintifaxl]

And this is why I don't like Steam for single player games.

btw, never press "what message" it removes the last code sent and process starts again.

i did manage to get into steam without waiting for that email to arrive, i just cant remember how i did it.

[r0bc]

Originally Posted by RCAF_FB_Orville

Yes, that is a distinct possibility CharveL, but equally given that Ali says it took a whole day for them to sort it out and get in touch with the 'Steam Guard code' his side, it is also possible that steam support is simply rubbish.

Considering they have over 30 Million Users, I'd say there support is pretty good.

[Blackdog_kt]

Yup, reinstalling tends to call up the steam guard too.

Freetrack doesn't seem to like win7 x64 much, it crashed while steam was updating and it messed it all up (it would hang on the update bar and not load the client), so i went to their support section and followed the advice to delete some files.

Apparently that resets Steam to the base version i had initially downloaded, so when i launched it again it updated again from scratch. All fine up till now (except forgetting my login details and fumbling around a bit with that, but that was my fault).

Once i logged in i got the steam guard notification.

It seems that reinstalling or wiping certain configuration files gets rid of your unique ID for your PC and a new one is created, which results in steam thinking it's another PC.

Thankfully i didn't have to try a second time and all the automated emails took less than a couple of minutes to arrive: i didn't know there is a 24 hour limit between subsequent steam guard codes and if i had messed it up and i requested a new one i'd be in panic mode waiting for that email

On the bright side of things, it seems that steam guard doesn't just change the allowed PC ID for your account but adds all the IDs you verify to a pool (according to their on-screen messages), which means that once you verify them you can log-in from any single one without going through it all again.

Not useful for everyone, but i can see it being used for people with multiple PCs (work/laptop and home desktop) or those who would like to use PCs of friends (at lan parties or visits) with their own steam account without risking getting it hijacked.