steam

I'm on Windows 7 and some time ago Steam refused to start up. I would double click the desktop shortcut and nothing would happen. The "busy" circle thing appeared on my cursor for a split second and then disappeared. I checked Task Manager and Steam was running in the background as a separate process every single time i tried to open it. So i ended all the processes and tried again. Still didn't work.

I tried starting Steam in Compatibility Mode and running it as Admin, still nothing. I disabled my anti-virus and restarted the PC, still absolutely nothing. I gave up and uninstalled and reinstalled Steam. Tried to open it and the Bootstrapper showed up searching for updates. I minimized this window but as soon as i opened it again, the progress bar stopped and the bootstrapper immediately froze and it stopped working. Once i finally closed it Steam again refused to open like before. Even if i don't open the bootstrapper again, it'll keep searching for updates for seemingly forever, it never finishes.

I tried re-downloading and reinstalling Steam with the Setup .exe about 3 separate times and still nothing worked. I tried using the very first SteamSetup .exe with the old square gray Steam logo and it somehow worked. It updated for a bit and then it started up as normal, i was able to install and play some games on it. The next day Steam was still working as normal and i finally thought i solved the problem.

But this morning I tried to open it and once again it still refused to open. I think i've reinstalled Steam about 3 times just today and i still can't get anything to work. If anybody can help me out that would be great, because I really wanna actually play games instead of losing my patience over stupid issues like this.

Also my Steam install is always incomplete. It only has a few folders for the bootstrapper languages and shit and there is absolutely nothing else.

http://i.imgur.com/Mku3ths.png

I've tried using someone else's complete Steam install they gave to me, it crashes at the login window. I have no idea what to do about this. I've been unable to play and all Steam games for over 6 months because of this shit. If anybody has any idea how to solve this it would be much appreciated.