Steam Offline Mode?

[Avatar13]

Anyone else having issues getting into offline mode today? I've been trying unsuccessfully to do it. I logged into steam and got the latest update. Started the game to make sure it would start and then exited out. I then selected restart steam in offline mode. It shuts down and tries to do it and then gives an error message that the steam network is unavailable and no login info is stored on this computer and then exits... Well I just left the steam network to go into offline mode so I know it's up but I have never encountered this before... was there also a steam update that broke something? Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.

[Risasi]

FWIW; I just went into offline mode about four hours ago, no problems...

[Avatar13]

Thanks for the reply! I finally figured out what was wrong, well not really, but it seems Windows actually thought I didn't have an internet connection. The network indicator had a red "X" on it showing there was no internet connection but I was still able to access the internet without any problems... It was very weird and once I rebooted (I had only been putting it to sleep so it never fixed the issue so I couldn't go into offline mode for a few days) all was well again. I just happened to notice it by chance (my taskbar is set to auto hide so I don't see that network indicator much unless I'm looking for it). Never saw that one before since using Win 7 upon release. I guess I forgot the old caveat, when having problems and you can't figure them out try rebooting!

[Risasi]

That makes sense. Steam is weird in that when you try to put it in offline mode Steam goes out the their servers and verifies your account, and the games you bought to authenticate they should be unlocked. I believe it bypasses the DRM for the duration you are in offline mode. I don't like it, but at least now after researching it I better understand their method of trying to provide hassle free DRM. Sometimes it just gets a little flaky.

If you have a desktop computer I would recommend you disable the sleep feature on your network card. It might be a setting in BIOS or it might be a setting in the driver properties. Your vendor should have documentation on that.

[BullGod]

After last updates, I think on July 4th, there was a problem with STEAM offline mode. It was mentioned on STEAM forums and it was fixed yesterday. I've red somewhere that it's good to make a backup of your winui.gcf file (located in STEAM/SteamApps folder) and have it handy in case of similiar problems- it seems with every update this file is updated also, and might prevent you from going offline if something is screwed with this file on STEAM side. Haven't tested it though.

Anyway it wasn't just your PC problem,Avatar13, but STEAM problem.