The old "Could not establish a connection to the VAC servers" error.

Check this out. I did some research myself on this bug since the other with my system, then I receieved this one soon after. So I dug deep, and in my attempt I uncovered out some serious information to hand down.

What's the cause?

1. The cause of the error is steam either dropping you,

or

2. You having bad routing/switches at your station/ISP which would also keep you from accessing the steampowered website while still having the error.

It's an odd fact to know that steampowered.com and the VAC servers are actually running off the same system(s). This is why you sometimes will not be able to access the website when you get the error message. Don't even bother with restarting Steam, I'll explain why in a minute.


So what's the true fix?

The first thing to do is to verify how serious the problem is. If you get this error, and minimize and attempt to go to steampowered.com and it loads just fine, then you are dealing with cause number 1. Steam has lost it's connection to you. This is much better than cause number 2. If you try, however, to access steampowered.com and it times out/you cannot ping it, then this means that there is bad routing/switching at your local ISP which is keeping you from accessing the VAC server and the website as explained above

If you are getting cause number 1 and you CAN access steampowered.com, just simply reset your modem. Make sure your IP is different. If your ISP doesn't allow Dynamic DNS, then just wait about 5 minutes. The problem is that Steam is in the process of dropping you, and you need to wait until IP address is dropped from the Steam server.

If you're getting problem number 2, the cause is from bad routing/switching to the VAC servers from your ISP. The only fix for this is time, in which I had to wait half a day before I could get back in a server. This rarely happens to users though. It tends to only happen to those who have a crappy ISP like Bellsouth DSL, or Verizon DSL/CABLE.

Here's a few things with not to do when getting the error that WILL NOT fix it.

Restarting Steam does not necessarily fix the problem. You have lost your connection with Steam, and Steam cannot see you for a short period of time, or the bad routing/switching will not stop until the problem is fixed at your station/ISP. So you should just wait until Steam drops your IP from the connection registry.

There is a small chance that you will be unable to access the steampowered website, but it can happen. If you happen to get this error do NOT do the following, because you're wasting your time:

Deleting your CLIENT.BLOB file will not work with this error. Client.BLOB in fact doesn't really fix anything. It simply reupdates Steam in hopes of fixing any downloaded issues. This file simply holds information FOR the games, and really has nothing to do with your connecting to servers.

Reinstalling Steam will not fix the problem. Since Steam lost a connection with you, reinstalling the client will not fix it, since you're still using the same IP address.

Reinstalling game content will not fix the problem. Everyone should know this! reinstalling the game is usually the last of worries with problems like these.

So in a brief summary, if you restart your modem and it still doesn't work, give it time. It will eventually. It may take all day, but it will work. Don't bother with the restart steam, each time you do this, you're eating up resources, and still using the same IP that's "lagged out" of Steam. Restarting Steam only tends to work because the time it takes Steam to drop your IP from registry, is VERY small.

Good luck, and any questions regarding to this error, let me know so I can help.

You know, I don't have any of these problems, but maybe these posts should be renamed with the problem in the title, and stickied in tech support.

i think we have a forum for this type of information

It's not really that common of an error. If someone randomly gets it they can use the search function.

Ya this actually happened to me and i'd just stop playing for a couple of hours.