i dunno whats wrong but almost daily now, when i click my icon i get a "this program has encountered a problem and needs to close" bs error message. so i uninstall and reinstall, its about the 3rd time this week. i was wondering if any1 knows WHY its happening or how to fix it ty

Give us some more information and we may be able to help.

well, yesterday i reinstalled steam , it worked fine. i woke up this morning and tryed to click the icon , after waiting about 2 minutes i get that error message. so i started to reinstall again, theres not much info just that i click icon, and get error msg...ive come to the conclusion never to exit steam ever again tho

Which Icon are you clicking, exactly?
If this is just a Steam problem, I suggest going to www.steampowered.com and checking their forums for the solution.

This means 1 of 3 things.
1. Your Steam installer maybe corrupt, try redownloading from it's actuall website, don't download it from links because most of the time those downloads are corrupt. Go to www.steampowered.com, go there and redownload it.
2. Have you obviously ran H-L through it? It's only slightly posssible but one of your hl files might be corrupt, this altering your whole Steam account. Try creating a new one.
3. What icon are you using to open your Steam? The one you should be using is the small one in your 'shortcut to programs' bar at the bottom of your screen. Just right click this icon and a list of options will come up (games,servers,options) this is the icon you should use.

I hope atleast one of these help Try http://www.steampowered.com/faq/forums