Ok, so I just finished building an Athlon XP 2800+ system hoping it could serve a dual purpose Windows 98SE and XP SP3 gaming.

I proceded to install Steam in Windows XP and the Steam browser doesn't work (apparently due to the browser requring SEE2-capable processors). Not a problem, less spam. Problem is, I can't download games either.
I just get the error that Steam cannot connect to the servers and queues the downloads indefinitely.

I tried everything I could find in Google:

• * Reinstall Steam
  * Clear the cache
  * Re-register the account
  * Clear the DNS cache
  * Reboot

Nothing worked.
I'm starting to wonder if there is a hardware issue where, like the browser, Steam requires SSE2-capable processors to work.

Does anyone here have Steam working on pre-SEE2 hardware, where they are able to download games?

Thanks