CSS / LFD load failure

[insinuate]

So my boyfriend recently built his first new computer and we're having issues getting CSS and LFD to run properly. It's a fresh install of Vista Ultimate 64, with fresh steam and rather than CSS loading properly it initializes, shows up on the taskbar and a window on the main screen then flickers away after about a full second. We've tried resetting the window size to defined and fullscreen through CSS properties, downloaded the steam dedicated servers, tried reinstalling steam, tried restarting, logging off steam, updated drivers, updated vista, deleting .blog files, turning off all starting applications through msconfig, lol.

 

His build is as follows:

Asus P5w deluxe mobo

Intel core 2 duo 6600

4GB ram

biostar 8500gt

generic hdd and cd rom

 

We've tried everything on google that we could find as well as the steam forums and useless support, to no avail. I really can't think of anything that could be causing the issue considering all we've installed was steam and a few anti-viral type applications. [spybot, Adaware, Avast, malware bytes and have even tried loading with these all inactive.]

 

Any thoughts out there? I'm really pulling my hair out on this one. Thanks. =)

[CowKing]

have you tried deleting everything except the steamapps folder and the steam.exe and then running the exe?

[insinuate]

have you tried deleting everything except the steamapps folder and the steam.exe and then running the exe?

 

Tried. I moved them to seperate folder to save them just in case, nothing [aka same result], so I moved them back. Tried just deleting the clientregistery.blob as well, no luck.