Help please? (click link)

[BikerSk8rKid]

[link=http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6147880&posted=1#post6147880]http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6147880&posted=1#post6147880[/link]

[fallen1]

unfortunately it looks like it is just another random bug in Steam. I'll look around more to see if I can find any sort of work around for it, but with most bugs in Steam all you can do is wait and hope that the people at Steam will eventually figure it out and fix it.

[fallen1]

I did a search on the Steam forums for "friends list unknown" and found a possible solution, but it involves modifying and/or deleting a registry entry. I usually don't encourage people to go screwing around in the registry unless they know what they are doing and understand the risks, since accidentally deleting or changing the wrong thing can seriously screw up your comp. In this case, since it is a very clearly marked registry key that you are looking for, I'll give you the possible fixes that I found, but I'll also reccomend that you back up the registry before making any changes just in case something goes wrong. I am also going to warn you that I have not had a chance to test this myself and that this is NOT an official fix from Steam.

to get into the resitry, first exit completely out of Steam then go to the Start menu and click on Run. In the little box that pops up type "regedit" (without the qutes) and this will open a new window with your registry hives. to back up the registry select File, then click Export in the drop down menu. Name the backup something simple and obvious like regbackup and save it.

now for the confusing part....

in the registry editor go to the folder HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Valve\Steam\Users\yourS team3ID\friends\
this folder should have one or more entries that correspond to the people on your friends list. If you know your friend's Steam ID you can calculate their Steam3ID by taking the number after the second ":" multiplying that by 2 and then adding 1. so if their Steam ID is 0:1:1234567 you would do 1234567 x 2 = 2469134 + 1 = 2469135. Once you know their Steam3ID you can look for that entry in the registry folder and delete it, then exit regedit. When you restart Steam it will either automatically create a new registry entry for that person using the data from the Steam Friends database, or it will create a new entry for them when you manually add them to your friends list again. Assuming the problem was a bad registry key, this should fix the problem.

If you accidentally deleted anything that was not in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Valve\Steam\Users\yourS team3ID\friends\ folder you can restore the registry by going into regedit and under File select Import and then the backup you made.