These are screens of (in order left to right) before i restart the halted download, right after it restarts, and the subsequent stoppage literally five seconds later...any ideas?

As for the things I have tried: Deleted the installing game, tried with Loadout, DOTA 2, Torchlight 2, and Dark Souls 2, Deleted all download files for the downloading game in the Steam folder, and ran steam://flushconfig after windows + r. Any suggestions?

Go in the steam settings, downloads and under download region change the server from which you download your games. I've had this before. This is a problem server side.

There we go. Thank god for you. Now I can enjoy my steam sale loot.

This works but it still keeps happening with new game installs. Not everyone but its frequent enough to be really annoying.