The gaming platform Steam was set up by Valve in 2003 for PC gamers who wanted a fully-fledged gaming experience on their hands with access to thousands of games. Steam has been praised by users over the years and with Xbox having Microsoft Store and PlayStation having its PlayStation store respectively, gamers who own a computer have been blessed with Steam.
After all this, it certainly doesn’t mean that Steam doesn’t have its flaws. One of the most commonly occurring problems with Steam is the preallocating error that occurs while downloading or installing games. This error could occur due to a number of different reasons and we shall be discussing the reasons why this preallocating stuck occurs.
Reasons for Occurrence
The major reasons the Steam preallocating stuck error occurs on your system could be due to slow internet speed, not having enough space on your hard disk drive/solid state drive, your PC doesn’t meet the recommended specifications of the game you want to download, downloaded cache of steam, inactive servers, using a firewall on your PC, overclocking, and using Steam as a normal user. All these problems account for the preallocating error.
You will need to fix this problem as soon as possible otherwise you won’t be able to enjoy your favorite games on your system. Furthermore, with games continuously having updates and security patch fixes, this won’t be possible either if this error keeps on showing up. The worst part is that this error can occur during the time of installation as well.
Troubleshooting
Steam Stuck on Unpacking
First and foremost, uninstall the game from your PC. After this, change the downloading server of the file and try downloading the game again on your system. This is done by going into Steam’s settings and you get an option to change the downloading region to select a region which has fewer burdens on it. Steam servers follow the rule of shared bandwidth where when more people are connected to a specific Steam server, the higher are the chances of a user having poor download speed. Too many clients on a single server is a very common problem.
Steam Stuck on Verifying Installation
When this situation arises, you will need to reboot your Windows and check whether the error is now fixed or not. If it hasn’t then clear the download cache on Steam and check for corrupted library files/folders on Steam and then repair them. Another thing you could do here is select any nearly located download server from your country of origin. Choosing a server which is close to your country is oftentimes the usual fix of a steam stuck preallocating error.
Steam Stuck on Updating
When this problem arises, the first step that you will need to do is select Steam Client and run it with the administrator account to resolve this issue. In addition to that, editing the host file fixes the error. Disabling the Windows firewall by clicking on this option from settings helps as well. Clean booting your PC is also an option you could look into here.
Steam Stuck on Installing
This method which is to be followed when this message appears on your screen is to restart your computer. After that, completely delete the download cache from your system and check for the corrupted or missing files and fix them to avoid these issues. Finally, reinstall the Steam Client on your PC and then download the game again.
Steam Stuck on Black Screen
If there’s a black screen that occurs while Steam is active on your system, check for the latest GPU drivers and upgrade them from their official website. Furthermore, remove the web browser cache and application cache to fix this black screen error. If none of them helps then you can look to reinstall Steam.
There are also some other basic troubleshooting steps which can help you counter the steam stuck preallocating error.
Checking Internet Connection
Whenever you want to download or install any game, your PC must be connected to a dedicated internet connection with good speed to make sure your download completes as quickly as possible. If there are any problems in your network such as server or modem issues then you will be unable to process these tasks and the download is going to show an error sooner or later.
Check PC Configurations
Some games need the right specifications to be run and some of them are able to run on normal systems. Higher-end games such as Fallout 4 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt require a quality PC build to run smoothly. If you face any issues while running these games and similar titles then you might want to take a look at your PC specifications. The game might not be meeting your specific requirements and before you go to download it, make sure your PC has the right internal components in it in order to run the game that you are going to download. Once you are sure that your PC has the right specifications, you can proceed to download the game because then there won’t be any errors that will pop up.
