HELP ME! Wallpaper engine WILL NOT UPDATE

[day]

Making a discussion post because i don't know what's wrong with it. Wallpaper engine has been unable to open for months on this computer, any time I'd try, I would open just a black application and have to close it thru the taskbar. The wallpapers I currently had installed on this computer were still active so I didn't mind much, since I don't change my wallpaper often. I'd gotten bored of my wallpaper so I looked to change it, and I discovered that it had a steam update that had technically completed, but was stuck at 100% and when I clicked the update button, it would try to install the update or patch it through, and it would quickly reset to the way it was before, stuck at 100% saying "update queued", without any way to update. To troubleshoot as best I could, I uninstalled and reinstalled, but in the process I lost my wallpaper, and when the problem persisted, I kept poking around to see how I could workaround. Steam has all the permissions to all the folders in the drive, I tried updating from the steam updater but it just keeps moving it back in the queue, I even found an old shortcut and some of my wallpaper files, but no way to open the application from my files, probably because I uninstalled it. Any help is appreciated, will post this in the discord as well.

[day]

Couple updates, as I posted them in the discord.
1. I just repaired my steam library. looked like it was gonna work but it didn't 😭
2. I was able to install from my program files, I found an installer that wasn't through steam and now I have wallpaper engine 2.2.120b open, but all of my steam downloads are pending, probably due to steam being a little ♥♥♥♥. This is definitely a steam problem and not because of wp engine, but still it needs to be fixed. I can't download any wallpapers until it is.

[Tim]

Going all the way back to the beginning of your first post: If the Wallpaper Engine window just appears black, it is almost always caused by antivirus apps blocking it. Do you have any antivirus apps installed that might be blocking Steam and / or Wallpaper Engine? It certainly sounds like that, also with the pending Steam downloads.

Try following these steps, including the red box at the top:

https://help.wallpaperengine.io/en/debug/reset.html

You can ignore the "Resetting all Workshop subscriptions" part but I think it might help if you follow all the other steps there without skipping anything.

[day]

Originally posted by Tim:

Try following these steps, including the red box at the top:

https://help.wallpaperengine.io/en/debug/reset.html

i found that website myself among all the fixes i tried. ultimately none of those worked but what i think happened was that the antivirus i previously had (i switched) had ♥♥♥♥♥♥ the ownership settings of the original wallpaper_engine folder from february 2021 when i first bought the app, and I was unable to modify it at all, or even view it in the file directory, because it kept saying i needed permissions from HOME-PC/me . So what fixed it for me was finding the actual folder in my program files, then using command prompt to force ownership onto all users, where i was able to delete the whole folder (among some other files that were behaving similarly) . When i reinstalled wallpaper engine after that, steam made new folders for everything and it works great now.
I appreciate the help, and while it should have been the right fix, for some reason the file was hidden in the GUI and I was only able to give myself permissions by typing out the whole path in command prompt. As someone who isn't very literate in command prompt, it took a lot of googling and fear of destroying my pc, but after only a few hours everything was fixed! haha. I have the error log from before the first time i uninstalled if you want to see it.
If I can offer a suggestion, pleasee check the wallpaper engine discord somewhat regularly. A lot of people post troubleshooting questions in there and don't get fixes for them.

[butcho]

Originally posted by Day:

If I can offer a suggestion, pleasee check the wallpaper engine discord somewhat regularly. A lot of people post troubleshooting questions in there and don't get fixes for them.

Thats because 'people' don't take the time to read pinned threads in this forum where it says:

Please note that Discord is not monitored by any developers and just for and by community members.

The best way to reach the developers is by making a post on the Steam Discussions

[Tim]

Glad you fixed it, it indeed sounded like a very nasty antivirus problem but glad you fixed it. Antivirus apps are really the most common source of issues with the app as they tend to just randomly lock up all files.

By the way, the reason why we do not tend to help out in Discord is simply because it's much more efficient here. I can walk away and come back to a conversation without losing track of it. Also, if I help you here or if you provide a good lengthy response here, other people can find it via Google or other search engines and might not even have to ask in the first place. That saves a lot of time on both ends because users don't have to ask the same questions over and over again, and we don't have to answer the same questions over and over again. Hope that makes sense!