Steam restart and game launch issues

[Lord SMG]

Recently I've been having this issue where games sometimes take forever to launch and will often crash 5-10 minutes into gameplay. If I try to restart Steam when this happens, Steam won't open again after exiting. If I restart my computer, the problem resolves itself, but it's annoying having to restart my computer every time I want to play a game.

I've verified the cache of my games, joined and left the steam beta, and reinstalled steam, all of which temporarily fixed the problem but a few days later it started again. Anyone else having a similar issue? Any suggestions on how to fix it? It seems to be just a steam thing as my PC is perfectly fine otherwise.

[Demopan]

Can you post your PC Specs? This may be a memory issue.

[The Giving One]

Sounds like conflicting software causing issues with the games and/or Steam.

Start here, but not everything that can possibly cause this is covered on this page :

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9828-SFLZ-9289

[Lord SMG]

Originally posted by GBSI:

Can you post your PC Specs? This may be a memory issue.

Graphics Card: Nvidia GTX 970
16 gigs of ram
CPU: Intel I7-6700k 4.00GHz 4001 Mhz 4 cores 8 logical processors
OS: Windows 10, x64 bit
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5

[Lord SMG]

Originally posted by The Giving One:

Sounds like conflicting software causing issues with the games and/or Steam.

Start here, but not everything that can possibly cause this is covered on this page :

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9828-SFLZ-9289

Thanks for the tip, this does have me thinking a process is causing it, I just have to figure out what. Often times the problem won't happen until later in the day when my computer's been on for a while, almost never when I first start it.

[The Giving One]

You are welcome, and to just test Steam only, you can try this, but no games in this boot :

Boot the PC into safe mode with networking. Log into Steam and browse the store, your library, come to the forums. Navigate around a bit and test Steam only in this boot.

If you see improvement and no crashes at all or problems with just the Steam client, then it is surely a process that is causing the issue in a normal boot of Windows, and then you just have to find it, if so.

[Ngewe J. Malamsenen]

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ wooden pc

[The Giving One]

Originally posted by PREDATARRRR:

Often times the problem won't happen until later in the day when my computer's been on for a while, almost never when I first start it.

Sorry, but after rereading your reply and this, I just wanted to kindly add that I could be wrong. This activity seems to possibly suggest it might actually not be software related. It could possibly be a hardware issue, but I personally prefer to start at the simple steps and work towards the more serious possibilities, just to clarify.

Feel free to reply if you need more help. Thanks.

EDIT..I would suggest checking the temperatures with HW monitor.

https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

Make sure all dust ports and fans are clean.

[Lord SMG]

Originally posted by The Giving One:

Originally posted by PREDATARRRR:

Often times the problem won't happen until later in the day when my computer's been on for a while, almost never when I first start it.

Sorry, but after rereading your reply and this, I just wanted to kindly add that I could be wrong. This activity seems to possibly suggest it might actually not be software related. It could possibly be a hardware issue, but I personally prefer to start at the simple steps and work towards the more serious possibilities, just to clarify.

Feel free to reply if you need more help. Thanks.

EDIT..I would suggest checking the temperatures with HW monitor.

https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

Make sure all dust ports and fans are clean.

Temperatures and voltages seem to be fine, and all my programs outside of steam run without problems, which just leads me to believe something's interfering with steam. it started doing this shortly after the major steam chat update this year.

[The Giving One]

Have you scanned for any possible infections lately and by using something good such as Malwarebytes ?

https://www.malwarebytes.com/

If you have not, I would suggest to boot into safe mode, and run Malwarebytes and a good antivirus program and scan as intensively as you can and do a full scan. Enable all options in the scan, keyloggers and such also.

If Steam will not open after the crash, you can try this also, but I think from what has been said, there is still an underlying cause to all this, so this following step might not help until the cause is found and corrected :

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3352-RYON-4107

Reinstall Steam (DO NOT uninstall Steam first before doing this)

The Steam installer can be downloaded here: http://store.steampowered.com/about/ and reinstalled to the same location where it is already installed.

This may fix potential issues with Steam client and service files. Installing into same location will preserve all installed games.

WARNING! Uninstalling Steam through any other method will delete all game and userdata content.

[Lord SMG]

Originally posted by The Giving One:

Have you scanned for any possible infections lately and by using something good such as Malwarebytes ?

https://www.malwarebytes.com/

If you have not, I would suggest to boot into safe mode, and run Malwarebytes and a good antivirus program and scan as intensively as you can and do a full scan. Enable all options in the scan, keyloggers and such also.

If Steam will not open after the crash, you can try this also, but I think from what has been said, there is still an underlying cause to all this, so this following step might not help until the cause is found and corrected :

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3352-RYON-4107

Reinstall Steam (DO NOT uninstall Steam first before doing this)

The Steam installer can be downloaded here: http://store.steampowered.com/about/ and reinstalled to the same location where it is already installed.

This may fix potential issues with Steam client and service files. Installing into same location will preserve all installed games.

WARNING! Uninstalling Steam through any other method will delete all game and userdata content.

I did a malwarebytes scan a few days ago that did find a couple things and it did seem to make a difference for a few days, so maybe the key is to do a scan in safe mode to find something it didn't find the first time. If that doesn't work, I'll try using the Steam installer. Thanks for the tips again, this is the first time I've posted on Steam discussions where someone was actually helpful and I really appreciate it.

[The Giving One]

You are welcome, and it's very helpful to mention that you did find malware before.

Things might be more serious than originally thought. I would also suggest you do an OS scan after the other scans suggested.

sfc /scannow from and elevated command prompt.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929833/use-the-system-file-checker-tool-to-repair-missing-or-corrupted-system

Let it run and pay attention to the report at the end of the scan.

If all else fails, a reformat and reinstall of Windows will surely kill any infections, if there are any still there. It's a final step, if you have no other choice.