Games won't uninstall. Dialog appears saying "Uninstalling %game%..."

[Ian]

Hi, anyone seen this error? I've asked steam support and they're banging their heads a bit. If I uninstall a game through steam the Uninstall dialog appears, shows the exact message above (so it clearly hasn't done its search and replace) and then does nothing. It's modal too so you have to kill the process :/

Reinstalling steam fixes it for a day sometimes but screws up all my Steam icons so I don't want to go down that route anyway. Steam beta didn't help. Doesn't matter which uninstall option within steam I use, it's always the same. Deleting the game directory leaves it still showing as installed in Steam.

[CapnCode]

I also have this error

[Ian]

I found a work around, but no actual solution. The workaround involves starting Steam with its developer console enabled and using the console command to uninstall the game. You can also do a similar thing through the Start->Run command, but that invokes the UI and breaks in the same way as uninstalling from the UI.

If you want to uninstall something in the meantime, until it gets fixed:

Create a shortcut with the following target:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" -console -developer

Change the path to your Steam.exe location. Just copy the Steam shortcut and go into the copy's properties.

When Steam starts it will now have a new tab called Console.

Find the ID of the game you want to uninstall, If you create a desktop shortcut it will be the number part of the URL, i.e. steam://rungameid/447040 you need the 447040

In the console at the bottom enter app_uninstall 447040 or what ever appID you got.

A red info line will appear at the top and it will appear as if nothing has happened, but any desktop shortcuts should disappear and the game will be uninstalled and removed from the Library list.

Hope that helps in the short term anyway.

The URL steam:// supports other commands like uninstall (so type steam://uninstall 447040 in the Windows Run box) but as mentioned earlier it just automates the UI, and this seems to be a UI issue so it will fail. Useful to know though.

[F4rtb0x]

Thank you for the workaround, i hope they fix this issue soon cause it sucks to have to uninstall like that

[CapnCode]

I am still having trouble with this. The workaround works, but it is not completely fixed.