Steam servers busy?

Got a new drive today to replace a faulty one, and I’ve started downloading all my Steam games over again. However, when I try downloading Left 4 Dead, it hangs during the “preparing files for install” check, and tells me that the servers are busy and I should try again in a few minutes. I just started downloading Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and STALKER: Clear Sky, and they give me no such message. Anyone else got trouble?

I’m downloading from the UK server. Gonna try changing that to one of the central European ones, and see if that does the trick. My Rainbow Six download is really slow, as well. Usually, I get speeds upwards of 800kbps, but now it’s stuck around 80kbps.

Edit: Changed to Benelux servers now, but to no avail. I even got a new time-out message saying my “Steam ticket” had expired. Ho-hum. I guess I’ll just have to wait until tomorrow.

In my years and years with using Steam, I have seen this message twice. When some complain about this, I can usually match this kind of behaviour to the times when I have had a game crash on start for a day, but its fine the next.