Fix: Steam thinks its running in compatibility mode

[Londude]

OK I managed to install it. But it still won't work. I click on the E: CD and choose play and it signs me into steam and then says your game will be ready in 5 hours????? What is going on?

[Tulip_Sniper]

Thanks for the info, helped me A LOT. I have another problem though: after the latest major update for steam, the one applied like 7ish days before Christmas, all my games have been crashing. I get anywhere from 5 minutes to half an hour of playtime before my game crashes.

[KierenLuckhurst]

Hi, I've tried both ways of going into the HKEY, etc, but I couldn't find steam.exe and i've tried tinkering around to turn off the compatiblity mode, yet no luck. Please message me if anyone knows a solution to this.

 

Cheers, Kieren

[Londude]

Hi Kieren. After HOURS of pain and misery I managed to get Steam working a week ago and black Ops installed.

 

Can you tell me whether you've managed to install Steam or not? Then we can go from there.

[KierenLuckhurst]

Well i just installed BF2 from a CD and it took me a couple days to get the game and it's expansions working. I installed it and reinstalled it to get it to work and went to regedit to delete somethings while I was following someone's guide. Perhaps in the process i changed a setting i'm not aware about. Then I tried to open steam, which i've had installed before i put BF2 on my laptop. It would say it's not recommended to run in compatibility mode and to turn it off. I've tried the original poster's guide, yet i couldn't find steam.exe, perhaps i could've missed it. I then uninstalled it, then reinstalled it, and once again it gave me the compatibility issue message. I currently have Steam uninstalled.

[Londude]

Try running Steam in Windows XP mode. For some reason that worked for me. Steam is really fickle, it wouldn't work for a long time then suddenly it started working. Edited January 6, 2011 by ZeroHour

[hotdog]

Hello!

I have nearly the same problem. I tryed to run steam and then came the error with the compatibility mode. So i checked if its turned on and it was not so i pressed cancel. Steam seems to work now but i can't see any Servers in any Game i have. After that i found this forum and deletet the steam.exe entry in the 2nd Step ( because in 1rst Step wasn't any steam.exe entry). It didn't change anything. I even tryed that with deleting the entire Valve folder in the registry but there was no folder. And now i become more and more desperate. Please... I NEED YOUR HELP!!

 

ps: sry for bad english

 

 

edit: the problem with not finding servers belongs to Call of Duty Black Ops....... i just rebooted my router and it worked again.

 

And THX for the help with the compatibility mode problem!

Edited January 7, 2011 by hotdog

[Londude]

Just try and keep running Steam. It takes a while to work sometimes.

[themanfromaus]

Hello ZeroHour,

 

Can i start off by saying that ive never ever joined a forum on any website. The reason for joining this one is simply to say thankyou. You didnt have to post your finding. You did. And for that you are a champion. Im not a geek. I barely know what i am doing when it comes to computers. But i love my PC games. I have always respected people that know their way around computers with expert precision (such as yourself) and you have just raised that respect to a higher level. For whatever silly reason our mind feels the need to stress us PC gamers out when an error occurs installing a game there are people like you in this world to make it a better place to live in. And once again we can enjoy the simple things in life. Gaming. Max respect for you my friend. Max respect.

 

 

Regards

 

Andrew

[Londude]

Who are you thanking themanfromaus?

[themanfromaus]

I am thanking ZeroHour for his help on this.

 

 

 

Hi

Just thought I would post a solution to a problem I had with Steam on Windows 7 RC x64 (but I believe it can happen in vista as well)

Everything was working in steam for weeks until I went to close it down last night, when I exited steam windows poped up with a message stating it was going to apply compatility settings to steam as it detected a problem (no cancel or way to stop it doing this)

When I relaunched steam it poped up with a message telling me:

Running Steam in Windows compatibility mode is not recommended. Please remove any Windows compatibility settings for all users under file properties for Steam.exe and restart Steam. Press 'Cancel' to premanently ignore this warning and continue.

 

Reinstalling steam made no difference as well as trying to set compatibility settings under the shortcut. I eventually had a go of the application compatibility tool microsoft gives out to see that the settings saved on the machines local database and that triggering when I ran steam. I had a hunt through the registry and found the area where the keys are kept and deleted the key and my problems were gone.

 

To fix the issue:

1. Hit start->run->regedit
   
2. Go to key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers
   
3. Look for a entry with your path to steam.exe
   
4. Delete that entry
   
5. If you dont find it there try HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers
   

 

Hope this helps if you get the issue.

 

Please feel free to register and say hello here and if you have any other problems in general please try a new post, you never know.

[Londude]

How DARE you not thanks me as well.

 

Just kidding

 

Did you get it working then?

[ZeroHour]

Hello ZeroHour,

 

Can i start off by saying that ive never ever joined a forum on any website. The reason for joining this one is simply to say thankyou. You didnt have to post your finding. You did. And for that you are a champion. Im not a geek. I barely know what i am doing when it comes to computers. But i love my PC games. I have always respected people that know their way around computers with expert precision (such as yourself) and you have just raised that respect to a higher level. For whatever silly reason our mind feels the need to stress us PC gamers out when an error occurs installing a game there are people like you in this world to make it a better place to live in. And once again we can enjoy the simple things in life. Gaming. Max respect for you my friend. Max respect.

 

 

Regards

 

Andrew

 

Thanks for taking the time to thank me

[Londude]

I wish to thank you too Zero Hour. Nice one mate.

[ZeroHour]

I wish to thank you too Zero Hour. Nice one mate.

 

Cheers, glad it sorted you. After I had the issue and trawled to find the solution I figured it was best to share.

[Londude]

Yeh it was a pain in the to install but got there in the end Edited January 21, 2011 by ZeroHour

[Tim_H]

Thanks very much for the info ZeroHour - just saved me some time

[0graham0]

Hi,

 

First off, thank's for the info regarding the registry key.

 

When I first saw this compatibility warning I clicked cancel by accident (out of habit). Of course in this case pressing cancel "permanently ignores this warning and continues." I don't see any way to enable the warning again. I can go ahead and delete the registry key but without the warning I don't know whether this is actually resolving the problem. Does anyone know where this setting is stored, perhap there's a config file I can tweak?

 

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[0graham0]

Hi,

 

First off, thank's for the info regarding the registry key.

 

When I first saw this compatibility warning I clicked cancel by accident (out of habit). Of course in this case pressing cancel "permanently ignores this warning and continues." I don't see any way to enable the warning again. I can go ahead and delete the registry key but without the warning I don't know whether this is actually resolving the problem. Does anyone know where this setting is stored, perhap there's a config file I can tweak?

 

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

Turns out the setting for the warning is in the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Valve/Steam/IgnoreCompatMode (for the value 1 is ignore, 0 is show warning)

 

Removing the key in the first post solved the compatibility problem, thanks!

[squirrelhuahua]

It appears that I am not the first to run across this post and been inspired to create an account just to thank you. I believe this action also fixed another issue I was having with Crysis. I haven't tried to play it yet...but, that is the only other problem I've had with any software on my new laptop, and Crysis files existed in where you directed me. Thank you a million times. I shall return!!!

[rejzor]

I can't find the \AppCompatFlags\

[Fritch94]

I created an account on here just to say thank you for taking the effort to post that, I've been trying to figure out how to fix that problem since last week

 

Thank you

[The_Mercenary]

Thanks Zero Hour, I had this same problem, tried reinstalling steam, and several other things. I'm pretty tech savvy, but still couldn't get it to run no matter what I tried. I joined this forum to say thanks, and would love it if you would add me in steam. (Not to act like a begging noob though. PM Me if you want to add me, I don't publicly give out my steam ID.)

[Castle24]

Thank you very much Zero Hour. Like others, I joined to say thank you and I'll be coming back here again for computer headaches. I would of started to try re-installing Steam, trying system restore, and most likely ending up pulling my hair out. Finding your post here saved me a lot of grief. This Windows 7 can be annoying to work with. I had to enable the run command in the start menu as it was hidden by default.

[reaper_129]

Thanks. I just developed this problem today, and spent about 5 minutes exhausting my limited tech-knowledge on the subject. I joined just to say thank you and that this was the quickest, easiest, most unproblematic fix I've ever seen on how to fix a problem.