Towards Mecca » How to fix steam protocol problems in Windows Vista

As some of you may already know, Osama had some problems running Steam under Windows Vista. He was frustrated and gave up on fixing it. I went over to his house a couple of nights ago and decided to take a look at this Steam problem. I use XP myself and haven’t experienced any problems with Steam before. After doing research on Google, a little experimenting and gulping down some tasty macaroons his wife made, I am happy to say I was able to solve his Steam problem. =)

The problem lies within Vista’s registry security settings. I am writing this from memory (I don’t have Vista myself). Here’s how to fix it:

Using Vista’s start menu, type “regedit” in the run field to start the registry editor.
Browse to the “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\steam” key. If you are having the problem you will notice that you aren’t able to view the key content
Right click on the “steam” key and click on “permissions…”.
You will notice that no user is listed under “Allowed users”. Add the following users/group and give them full access: Administrators (group), System (user) and your own user name.
If you press Ok, it may complain that you are not the owner and aren’t allowed to do this. In this case simply click on Advanced and add the above users as owners and try step 4 again. I only added System as owner and that did it. (You may need to close the permissions window and reopen after assigning owners)
That’s it! You now should be able to see the content of the key but it may be empty. In this case re-install steam and you should be good to go.

Again, I am doing this from memory so my descriptions may not be exact, but hopefully it’ll be close enough to get the job done. =)

Osama

Says:
June 30th, 2008 at 9:37 am

What can I say Farid, I’d be out of Steam if it wasn’t for you

StevenPhibbs

Says:
July 7th, 2008 at 1:14 am

This is the key to the fix everyone has been looking for. Thanks Farid! I used this Registry permissions fixed, which allowed me to use the suggested registry repair fix found on Steam’s official support site – https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2087-MZES-9065

The combination fixed my protocol issue and allowed me to buy games!

Thanks Again!

JackJack Says:
September 14th, 2008 at 10:12 am

Hey thanks this worked for me!

FaIc0ns21 Says:
November 2nd, 2008 at 5:33 am

The HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\steam” key doesn’t exist on my computer, is there a solution to this?

Sam Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 5:22 am

All I get is a big “Access is Denied” Which is stupid because it is my computer.
Is there a way to hack the registry to delete this key and then make a new one under the “steam” name?

kepa

Says:
February 2nd, 2009 at 3:35 pm

After a huge wrestling match I found this solution:

1) Uninstall Steam

2) Open notepad and paste the following

— Copy below this line —

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\steam]
@=”URL:steam protocol”
“URL Protocol”=”"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\steam\DefaultIcon]
@=”steam.exe”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\steam\Shell]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\steam\Shell\Open]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\steam\Shell\Open\Command]
@=”\”C:\\Program Files\\Steam\\steam.exe\” \”%1\”"

— Copy above this line —

and save it as Steam.reg
(yeah, the file is the same as in https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2087-MZES-9065).

3) Double-click the freshly created Steam.reg to add its contents to registry.

4) Open the registry editor (regedit) and locate HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/steam

5) Right-click the key in the tree (HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/steam) and modify the permissions so that your user account has full rights. Apply, OK.

6) Re-install steam.

7) ???

Profit

This worked for me where other solutions presented across the didn’t. Hope it helps someone. I’m gonna post this around until you like it.

Richard Says:
March 5th, 2009 at 8:54 pm

It worked, however took me quite a few tries, how i was able to fix it was, i had 2 program’s file in my c drive, 1 was program files the other was program files (x86).

The registry fix, apply it before you install steam, first uninstall then apply the fix then install steam, make sure all the permissions are correctly added before installing.

if your steam installed into the
c:/program files(x86)/Steam/

Make sure that your registry is set for only c:/program files/Steam/Steam.exe

Hope this helps, goodluck took me awile.

Nath