This guide will let you know how to fix the 0 Byte download or the downloads won’t start problem on Steam.
Restart Steam & PC
In this section, we will take you through the steps to Restart Steam in order to fix the issue. If it didn’t, then you need to restart your PC.
- The first thing you will need to do is locate the Steam application on your computer screen and click on the Steam logo at the top left corner of the screen.
It will open up a dropdown menu. - In the dropdown menu, click on the “Exit” option to close the Steam application completely.
- Once Steam is closed, wait a moment, and then relaunch the Steam application. After Steam has relaunched, check if the error or issue you were experiencing is resolved.
- If the error persists even after relaunching Steam, then you must reboot your PC.
Reset Windows Proxy settings
This section describes how to reset Windows Proxy settings to make sure that you don’t have a proxy enabled in Windows. If it’s turned on, it can stop different programs to run properly.
- Click on the “Start” menu located at the bottom left corner of your computer screen.
This will open the Start menu. - Within the Start menu, click on the “Settings” icon and navigate to “Network & Internet“.
- Within the Network & Internet settings menu, scroll down until you find the section labelled “Proxy” and click on it.
- Turn off Automatically detect settings and make sure you don’t have a proxy server setup and enabled.
- If the solution isn’t fixed, turn the Automatically Detect settings back on and close the settings.
Check disk isn’t in use
In this section, we will take you through the steps to check if your disk isn’t in use by other programs, as it will not let your download start.
- Start the download of updates or a new game on Steam.
- While the download is in progress, go to your Downloads section and look for a section that displays information about network and disk usage.
- Check the network and disk usage indicators.
If you notice that the network usage is at zero, while the disk usage is fully maxed out or showing high activity, it indicates that your disk is heavily occupied by Steam or another program. - In order to resolve this issue, close any other programs that might be using your disk extensively.
- Once you have closed the unnecessary programs, try the download again.
Signs of drive failure (High response times)
If you are using a hard drive and it consistently has high average response times, then it may be a sign of failure.
In this case, you need to back up your data.
Flush DNS Cache & Steam download cache
This section describes how to clear caches including our DNS cache and your Steam download caches. It will help to solve the issue.
- Press the Windows key + R on your keyboard simultaneously.
This will open the Run window. - In the Run window, type “cmd” and press Enter.
- In the Command Prompt window, type “ipconfig /flushdns” and press Enter.
This command will clear your DNS cache.
- Open the Run window again, type “steam://flushconfig” and press Enter.
A pop-up window will appear with a message confirming the action. - Click on the “OK” button in the pop-up window to proceed with clearing the local download cache.
- Once the cache is cleared, you’ll need to restart Steam for the changes to take effect and the download should be able to run properly.
