Windows 10 - Steam not running games from shares

[heilage]

I benched it with AS SSD, but I'll give it a go with Crystal Disk Mark and report back with the results some time during the weekend.

[bigjme]

If you want to to do any re-runs for different setting you might try, let me know

[heilage]

Here are the benchmarks for the system drive, which is a vdisk on the cache, and the mounted share where the steam library is, which is a cache-only share, mounted through SMB. Doesn't seem bad at all, so I guess AS SSD was the issue for me.

 

[bigjme]

Weirdly the network speed seems more realistic similar to my test. and like i saw, the direct drive seems way way over the top.

It doesn't seem to be a speed issue but i wonder if there is additional latency to starting a read via the network which may cause the issue we are seeing.

 

Regards,

Jamie

 

 

Edit:

On a side note, i tried to launch a less intensive game today (Wolfenstein: The Old Blood) to find that whilst the game was playable and fps didn't drop below 60, you could feel a noticeable jump every so often where things would just load in.

Also running through rooms were very blurred as the proper textures were not loading quick enough.

 

One thought i had was that i wonder if my anti-virus etc. is scanning the files from the network as i load the game and causing the lag as it checks them all. I am running malware bytes and avast, and have the network drive in the excluded list but it is still possible that this may be happening.

 

Edit 2:

So i disabled my Avast and was able to play Wolfenstein: The Old Blood without the issues i had before and was able to play AC: Syndicate with no lagging and the load times were much better (almost the same as from the vdisk)

So i went to try Hitman: Absolution to find that steam would not run it due to a "missing service" although the other games ran fine. I put this down to the fact that steam is running entirely from the network drive and has no local install.

 

I have re-installed steam on my SSD and have set up so only the game files are stored over the network which should resolve this issue. It may even resolve the issue of my AV scanning all files from the network drive. I have around 350GB of games downloadingnow so i will have a test over a few different game types later today

[rjbernaldo]

Hi All,

 

So I got UNRAID up and running and came across the same problem, games don't get through the "Preparing" stage when you try to launch them on Steam.

 

I think I finally found what's causing the error. So the Steam app doesn't run from the admin account, but the games still do. Unfortunately, mapping drives on Windows explorer only make them visible to your user account - the drives must also be mapped in the administrator account.

 

http://superuser.com/questions/690287/command-prompt-in-administrator-mode-doesnt-see-mapped-drives

 

PS: This was on Windows 8.1 - I hope this can still provide some insight to some users.

[unbroken]

I have a windows 10 VM which boots into a non-admin account automatically (no password), and the network mapping to the steam library on my array works fine.

 

As far as Steam games not running after that initial "first run" message, it's probably a missing .net framework or driver issue. Go into the individual game folders within your steam library and manually install the .net framework or whatever other bundled requirements software that are in the Redistributable folder for the game.

[Maniac]

Hi All,

 

So I got UNRAID up and running and came across the same problem, games don't get through the "Preparing" stage when you try to launch them on Steam.

 

I think I finally found what's causing the error. So the Steam app doesn't run from the admin account, but the games still do. Unfortunately, mapping drives on Windows explorer only make them visible to your user account - the drives must also be mapped in the administrator account.

 

http://superuser.com/questions/690287/command-prompt-in-administrator-mode-doesnt-see-mapped-drives

 

PS: This was on Windows 8.1 - I hope this can still provide some insight to some users.

Thank you my good man I just had the same issue on a new Win10 VM for gaming. This was the solution for me! Used the registry trick. Games now start without issues.

 

Also noticed that when the VM boots, it discovers the network drives straigth away.

 

[Nezra]

Hi All,

 

So I got UNRAID up and running and came across the same problem, games don't get through the "Preparing" stage when you try to launch them on Steam.

 

I think I finally found what's causing the error. So the Steam app doesn't run from the admin account, but the games still do. Unfortunately, mapping drives on Windows explorer only make them visible to your user account - the drives must also be mapped in the administrator account.

 

http://superuser.com/questions/690287/command-prompt-in-administrator-mode-doesnt-see-mapped-drives

 

PS: This was on Windows 8.1 - I hope this can still provide some insight to some users.

 

I can confirm this solution. Exactly my issue as well with my win 10vm. The account I logged into the VM as was administrator. couldn't play anything steam related without adding this Dword.

 

Off to play my missing steam games!

[sjhotz]

I have tried the DWORD (no luck), and I cannot figure out NET USE, the links provided do not give me enough context on how to use. I cannot afford another SSD. Which leaves me frustrated that I cannot launch Skyrim from Steam. Are there any detailed NET USE instructions for our Unraid systems?

 

This is the path and no matter how i set it up NET USE comes back with wrong parameters...

\\GHECKO\Game Library

[ltiur]

Same thing was happening to me. I had my whole steam library freshly moved to my cache ssd share. Some games worked, same games didn't. Didn't have all the right distributable packs.

 

Easiest fix was to move one of the games to the vdisk (i.e. c:\), run it and let it update and do it's thing. It'll auto grab what's missing from all the right places.

 

Confirmed it worked after this.

 

Moved the game back to the cache share, and confirmed it's still working as expected.

[jammsen]

Hey i tried ARK: Survival Evolved on many different settings, but as long as you try to start the game not from a vdisk meaning an internal hdd disk, the BattlEye will prevent it from happing, according to them you are cheating and so you wont get the game opened, which is really sad. I didnt tried to use the "Windows Symbolic Link" solution, i didnt had a link for that handy, but i dont think i will work with that too

 

BattlEye AntiCheat considers, every KVM hardware as a cheater so *big thumbs down*

Edited March 20, 2018 by jammsen

[JKY]

On 1/23/2016 at 2:27 AM, rjbernaldo said:

Hi All,

 

So I got UNRAID up and running and came across the same problem, games don't get through the "Preparing" stage when you try to launch them on Steam.

 

I think I finally found what's causing the error. So the Steam app doesn't run from the admin account, but the games still do. Unfortunately, mapping drives on Windows explorer only make them visible to your user account - the drives must also be mapped in the administrator account.

 

http://superuser.com/questions/690287/command-prompt-in-administrator-mode-doesnt-see-mapped-drives

 

PS: This was on Windows 8.1 - I hope this can still provide some insight to some users.

Thank you!

 

This fixed the issue for me, notably this bit:  "Since mapped drives are user-centric, that Admin user context will not have the (same) drives, and you'll have to map them for that user context once the command window is open as Adminsitrator, e.g. by running net use <letter>: \\<server>\<share>. "