Thread: Online games won't load

I have another problem, which started about a week ago.

I've had Starcraft 2 installed for a while, and recently was 'gifted' Left 4 Dead 2 through a Steam account, which I played a couple times with no problems.

For a few days now, neither of the 2 games will load. The Starcraft 2 update screen comes up, and it says that certain updates are being installed, but they don't actually install, and nothing happens.

Left 4 Dead 2 won't load either. I'm in the Steam account, and press 'Play'. A box comes up that says "Preparing to launch Left 4 Dead 2", it dissappears, and nothing happens.

With both of these games, after I've tried and failed to launch the game, if I go into task manager and look at processes, it will say Starcraft2.exe or Left4Dead2.exe is running, like they're running as background processes or something. If I try to press 'Play' Left 4 Dead 2 again, it alerts me that only 1 instance of Left 4 Dead 2 can run at a time.

Additional Info
I've tried running non-online games (Tomb Raider Underworld, Caesar IV) and they load up fine.

I've reinstalled Starcraft 2 but that didn't help.

EDIT: Running Vista


Again, I don't expect anyone to spend a long time looking into this. I'm just wondering if anyone happens to know what the problem likely is. Thanks for reading.