Steam friends login

From what you say, i understand that you open torchlight shortcut and then it opens steam. If this is the case, you should open steam separately and leave it online, then open the desired game ( Torchlight 2 in your case ) and it should work fine. If it goes offline mode on its own it's a network issue and you should check your internet connection.

EDIT:

I thought it's obviously that those issues are the result of a poor internet connection. Perhaps you can try :

1. Exit steam. Delete everything from steam folder except steamapps folder and steam.exe file. Relaunch steam and it will make all the updates again (it will take a while) and check if it acts the same.

2. Try a complete reinstall or steam (you can save the steamapps folder somewhere on your HDD so that you don't have to download every game again or lose save games etc.

Other than that it's purely an internet issue.

Ok, it does seem that going through the installscript.vdf and looking for everything under Run Process and putting that in the registry seems to get rid of the prompt. For example, for Assassin's Creed III I have this:

"Run Process"
{
    "DXSetup"
    {
        "process 1"     "%INSTALLDIR%\\Support\\DirectX\\DXSETUP.exe"
        "command 1"     "/silent"
        "NoCleanUp"     "1"
    }
    "VCRedist"
    {
        "HasRunKey"     "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\Valve\\Steam\\Apps\\208480"
        "process 1"     "%INSTALLDIR%\\Support\\VCRedist\\vcredist_x86.exe"
        "command 1"     "/q"
        "NoCleanUp"     "1"
    }
    "Punkbuster"
    {
        "process 1"     "%INSTALLDIR%\\Support\\Punkbuster\\pbsvc.exe"
        "command 1"     "/i --no-prompts --no-display --skip-tests --i-accept-the-pb-eula"
        "NoCleanUp"     "1"
    }
    "uplaylauncher"
    {
        "process 1"     "%INSTALLDIR%\\Support\\GameLauncher\\UplayInstaller.exe"
        "command 1"     "/S"
    }
    "kb971512_x86"
    {
        "Requirement_OS"
        {
            "OSType"        "Windows Vista"
            "Is64BitWindows"        "0"
        }
        "process 1"     "%WinDir%\\system32\\wusa.exe"
        "command 1"     "\"%INSTALLDIR%\\Support\\KB971512-x86.msu\" /quiet "
        "IgnoreExitCode"        "1"
    }
    "kb971512_x64"
    {
        "Requirement_OS"
        {
            "OSType"        "Windows Vista"
            "Is64BitWindows"        "1"
        }
        "process 1"     "%WinDir%\\system32\\wusa.exe"
        "command 1"     "\"%INSTALLDIR%\\Support\\KB971512-x64.msu\" /quiet /norestart "
    }
}

Adding each (DXSetup, VCRedist, ...) of those to the registry under Computer\HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Valve\Steam\Apps\208480 as a DWORD with a value of 1 leaves me with only the UPlay prompt (which I think is a uplay problem and not a Steam problem). The whole process could probably be automated except that I don't see an easy way to find the number (208480) for the app. It's not contained in the install file itself, so I had to find it by searching for Assassin's Creed in the store.

If it has to be done manually like this, then it probably isn't worth the effort.