for my account, however when I try to dload it, Steam just exits completely (including the little icon in the lower right part of the start bar). So I restarted steam and tried again...same problem. All other games work fine (dload, install and play with no issues).

How can I fix this??

Here is some info you need to know:
1) I had another account on here with a different user name I created for 1 game only. This game was Dark Messiah I had bought for 20 bucks at GameStop. I installed it on this computer a while back under that different user name. And when I switched users from my prime account to this 2nd accout it worked fine. Indeed, my main had all my games and the backup had just Dark Messiah. There was no crossover between accounts.
ASIDE TO STEAM: Please let us merge our accounts or change our user names...this wouldn't be too hard for you to program into your otherwise awesome STEAM program.

Anyway, now that I've bought it again for my primary account...when I switch users between Steam accounts, Dark Messiah isn't installed on the primary account BUT the secondary account, which is supposed to have only one game installed on it (Dark Messiah) is now showing LOTS of games on it, but it is obvisouly from my primary account. I didn't even try to see if they worked. I did notice some more strange things though...like the game Arx Fatalis. On my primary account for which it is purchased, it shows Arx Fatalis installed (which is correct). When I switch users to the old account however, it shows that it is just the demo (which I've never installed..again just installed DM on that account). The game list on the primary account is long, so I didn't bother to go through the whole list to see if there are other strange things with other games.

Anyway...any suggestions?

All I want to do is be able to download and install DM on my primary account and STEAM just exists before it even starts to download anything.

Sorry for the long post....just trying to get in all the facts.

Thank you very much!

You have a Steam account issue; so contact Steam.

I don't know about the problems that your having with Steam shutting down, but the reason your games are showing up on your empty account is because, I'm assuming, you're using the same computer with both accounts. Because you have a number of games already installed, they'll show up either as demos or preloads if someone else were to sign into steam on your computer without having bought them.