I'm sure many of you are aware of the workaround to get Steam to run on XP and Vista. I've been using it thoughout the past few years on my XP build, but as of this week, it appears Valve has made changes to stop this.

Myself and 2 separate friends are getting "Connecting Account: xxxx" when launching steam. Both friends are also using XP, one is local and the other in a completely different country.

Has anyone else encountered this issue?