Daniel C

HOW DO I GET MY STEAM ACCOUNT TO CONNECT? (explanation below)

I bought the game ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIM yesterday for my pc. Then i spent 4 hours installing STEAM to my pc because it just..... kept.... freezing..... during installation. Seven tries later, it finally installed correctly. I logged into my account via "steampowered.com" and installed SKYRIM itself. I used setup.exe to launch the game and clicked "PLAY THE ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIM". (i also clicked the play button using my library in my steam account) A window was brought up that said,

*connecting steam account: (my account name)

This is where my journey ended. Before 15 seconds is up, a new window appears that says,

*Steam is not responding. Windows is searching for a solution to the problem.

Nothing after that works. I've tried many times and now i have just about had it. On the back of the game package it says, "REQUIRES INTERNET CONNECTION AND FREE STEAM ACCOUNT TO ACTIVATE"......i have those things and i meet (and surpass greatly) the system requirements. I've lived up to my end but their software seems to be useless....meaning it's cr*p from what i've seen from the number of times it froze during the initial installation. Please help. Walmart's return policies for video games are not great.

Operating system: Windows 7

HP Pavilion g series