Steam on Windows 7/8

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Peacock
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Joined: 18 Jun 2023, 00:59
OS: win7
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Steam on Windows 7/8

Unread post by Peacock »

DoNotThrowOldPCsAway wrote: 10 Jul 2025, 17:20 I am currently using SteamCMD https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD with -overrideminos parameter.

For example, If I want to download Half-Life 2 (Steam Application ID 220):
  1. I open command line (Win+R cmd)
  2. then I navigate to SteamCMD install directory using cd command,
  3. type SteamCMD -overrideminos,
  4. set up install directory using force_install_dir <directory> command (for some reason it has to be set up before signing in),
  5. then I sign in with login <username> <password>,
  6. and type app_update 220,
  7. then I move files to correct steamapps folder (I found it to be less messy to download them somewhere else first)
  8. and finally click install in Steam client that proceeds to validate the files.
Also DepotDownloader works as well:
https://github.com/SteamRE/DepotDownloader
Just go to steamdb and find the game's app id and depot id, then use in cmd:

Code: Select all

DepotDownloader.exe -app (app id) -depot (depot id)  -username (username) -password (password)

Peacock
Posts: 25
Joined: 18 Jun 2023, 00:59
OS: win7
Has thanked: 8 times
Been thanked: 6 times
Afghanistan

Steam on Windows 7/8

Unread post by Peacock »

Peacock wrote: 10 Jul 2025, 22:18
DoNotThrowOldPCsAway wrote: 10 Jul 2025, 17:20 I am currently using SteamCMD https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD with -overrideminos parameter.

For example, If I want to download Half-Life 2 (Steam Application ID 220):
  1. I open command line (Win+R cmd)
  2. then I navigate to SteamCMD install directory using cd command,
  3. type SteamCMD -overrideminos,
  4. set up install directory using force_install_dir <directory> command (for some reason it has to be set up before signing in),
  5. then I sign in with login <username> <password>,
  6. and type app_update 220,
  7. then I move files to correct steamapps folder (I found it to be less messy to download them somewhere else first)
  8. and finally click install in Steam client that proceeds to validate the files.
Also DepotDownloader works as well:
https://github.com/SteamRE/DepotDownloader
Just go to steamdb and find the game's app id and depot id, then use in cmd:

Code: Select all

DepotDownloader.exe -app (app id) -depot (depot id)  -username (username) -password (password)
Found a thread:
https://github.com/SteamRE/DepotDownloader/issues/627#issuecomment-2999732242
I don't think there's a way to fix the client itself using DepotDownloader but it should be possible for DepotDownloader to "fix" broken updates/installs.

It simply needs a way to update the appid's appmanifest_#.acf automatically when you install an updated manifest.

For example, if you update a game that's using the new ZSTD compression on Win7 you'll end up with the StateFlags set to 1030 or 1542 for "Corrupt Download". If the game is manually updated with DepotDownloader, then you can bypass this error by updating the appmanifest manually. Specifically you'll want StateFlags to be 4, UpdateResult to be 0, StagingSize to be 0, buildid to match TargetBuildID, BytesStaged to match BytesToStage, BytesDownloaded to match BytesToDownload, and finally the InstalledDepots array will need to be updated with the updated manifest information.

If that appmanifest update can be done automatically by DepotDownloader, it can serve as an alternative to the Steam Client, and when the Steam Client is restarted it will correctly see that the game was updated and allow you to run it without going into an update death loop.
This thread let me actually get some games in my library working again after the zstd update!

I wrote a quick python script to perform the steps described by @nomakewan above. It takes a path to a manifest file and parses it. If a -username parameter is provided after the manifest path, it downloads all the staged depots by calling DepotDownloader, and then rewrites the manifest file with the flags and installed depots updated.

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