Tag Archives: error

Technology

Steam Disk Write Error: Explained and Resolved

If you encounter the disk write error in Steam and the usual fixes don’t work, you may need to make changes to the files using Windows Explorer.

Before making any changes, start by closing Steam and reopening it with administrator privileges. This can often resolve unusual errors. You can do this by right-clicking on the Steam executable or desktop shortcut and selecting “Run as administrator.” It’s also worth temporarily disabling any antivirus or firewall software to see if it is causing the issue. If this resolves the problem, consider adding an exception for Steam in your security software.

If the issue persists, it’s possible that your Steam directory is set to Read-Only, preventing new data from being written to it. To address this, navigate to your C: drive and locate your Steam folder in either the Program Files or Program Files (x86) directories. If your games are stored on a separate drive, locate the Steam folder there as well. Right-click on the Steam folder, select Properties, and uncheck the Read-Only box under Attributes.

Steam folder propertiesDaniel Trock/SlashGear

As a last resort, consider moving your Steam folder to a different storage drive. If you have a second internal drive or a fast external drive, close Steam, move the Steam folder out of the Program Files directory to the other drive, and then relaunch Steam and attempt to install a game.

News, Technology

Reddit’s Latest Major Outage Impacted Desktop and Mobile Users

Reddit logo on phone Primakov/Shutterstock

If you tried logging into Reddit today and received an error message instead, you aren’t alone. On Wednesday, the controversial social network updated its Status website to indicate it was experiencing “elevated error rates,” which it labeled as a major outage without any additional details. Unlike some recent issues, this particular incident impacted both the desktop version of Reddit and its official mobile apps — and any third-party apps that may remain following its recent API change, though there aren’t many left.

Assuming you could access the website, many features still worked as expected, including voting, commenting, and playing videos. However, complaints from impacted users indicated that when applicable, users were unable to open the website and get content to load in the mobile apps, instead seeing an error page or being faced with endless attempts at loading. The issue appeared widespread, with reports surfacing from users located around the world.

The reason for this outage remains unclear

Reddit logo on smartphone rafapress/Shutterstock

At this time, Reddit hasn’t revealed what caused this particular outage, and it is possible that issues may continue to linger for some users throughout the day. The company updated the official Reddit Status website to list the outage as “resolved” at 3:15 p.m. ET / 5:15 p.m. ET on Tuesday, and if history is anything to go by, that’ll likely mark the end of this particular incident.

This is the first major outage to occur on Reddit since the network was the subject of a user-base-wide protest this past June. Thousands of subreddits had gone private, or “blacked out,” in protest of rules that would require users to pay for the usage of application programming interface (API) software. However, due to the protests subsiding in recent weeks, it is unlikely that any remaining protests among subreddits are responsible for this particular outage.