Any of those three things would jam you up right away. Did you do *all* the things suggested in the article you linked? At the very least, you should make sure that you're not on a router that's blocking Steam, not using a firewall blocking it, and make sure - depending on your Operating System - that you're running at least temporarily with admin permissions, especially to whatever folder you're trying to write (install) to. On the other hand, if it's been a few years, then a lot has probably changed in your signal flow. I've always been able to go to the downloads screen in the client and manually press the button to start the download.
OneFiercePuppy: Sometimes games do get stuck in 'queued' state, usually when the client decides to schedule them instead of immediately downloading them.
