Tried to install Steam on a P4 Dell. Madness ensued. Whenever Steam was running, WinXP would blue screen.
By default, Steam runs when the system boots, so I couldn't even boot the OS anymore without using safe mode.
Web searching just turned up some irritating threads where other people had the same problem, but the Steam "community" refused to consider the possibility that Steam could be involved, no matter how clearly Steam had been narrowed down as a consistent factor. Since an application can't cause blue screens, they wouldn't entertain any discussion of it at all, even as an indirect relationship.
Instead, such threads just turned into arguments about Windows XP, because you know, you're not "supposed" to run XP anymore, Microsoft said so. It gets magic viruses through thin air. That must be why it's blue screening. :eyeroll:
I searched up Microsoft's article for the blue screen error code. Turns out the particular error can be caused by user mode services and applications. I didn't know that was so directly possible, but it is.
The solution turned out to be stupidly simple. I had forgotten that machine was running SP2, not SP3. Uninstalling Steam, installing SP3, then reinstalling Steam fixed it. That such a simple thing was never mentioned in Steam's forums is ... well... I guess not surprising really.
People having these problems always said they had a fresh install. So did I. I think that's how the SP2 mistake can get people.
It's weird though - my nephew was running Steam on XP SP2 fairly recently and it worked for him, so the issue isn't universal.
