Steam won't launch games or start itself up until after I restart my PC

[Clear Crossroads]

This has become a constant problem to the point that I have mild anxiety about even trying to launch anything in Steam at all at this point. Every time I go to launch anything, there's this apprehension of "will it boot.... will it boot.... am I going to have to shut down my entire workstation for the umteenth time?"

If Windows has been running for maybe about a half a day, then Steam will not launch any games. The "Preparing to launch" window will show up, and then the library in Steam's UI will say "Running" next to the game I've tried to launch, but the game never actually launches. The game won't even show up in the Task Manager. It doesn't matter what game I try to launch.

Additionally, if I try to exit Steam and restart the program once this has taken effect, Steam won't even open. The Steam update process will go through just fine, but then the log in window never actually appears, and nothing shows up in the System Tray. However, unlike the games which fail to launch, Steam does at least still show up in the Task Manager as though it's at least *trying* to launch.

The closest thing to a solution that I've been able to find on Google is lots of people saying that if you close the Steam Client and/or the Steam Client Bootstrapper in the Task Manager and then relaunch Steam, then it'll boot, but this doesn't seem to do anything. I can close down everything that has anything to do with Steam in the Task Manager, and the program will still fail to launch.

I found one person who suggested that you should de-activate fast startup, and I'm going to try that, but this is a band-aid, not a cure/fix proper. Since I'm having the problem right now and have to restart anyway, I've just de-activated fast startup. So hopefully, I won't have to do this tomorrow. But I should not need to sacrifice fast startup for Steam. I see this as an unacceptable one-sided compromise, whether it works or not.

If it makes any difference, I'm running Windows 10 Home on an AMD FX-4100 processor with an nVidia GeForce GTX 645 graphics card, and a Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P motherboard.

I've spent a lot of time searching google for a solution to this problem and have so far found nothing.

EDIT: De-activating fast startup did not help at all. The same problem still persists.

EDIT (October 15, 2020): In order to save you the time of reading through this entire thread, I am going to explicitly mention here in the OP that THE ROOT OF THIS PROBLEM IS THE GENERIC XBOX360 CONTROLLER DRIVER! Also, if you're using SCP Toolkit for your PS3 controller (and maybe your PS4 controller?) on your PC, then this will cause the same problem because SCP TOOLKIT MAKES USE OF THIS BROKEN DRIVER! Additionally, some controllers like the Logitech F310 can be configured to make use of this driver. If you are experiencing this issue on a controller other than the XBOX360 or PS3/PS4 controllers, then your controller is probably configured to use this driver, and you will want to look into changing that setting. DO NOT USE THIS DRIVER! I know it REALLY sucks, but you're just gonna have to learn to let go of your XBOX 360 controller and/or your PS3 controller. The creator of SCP Toolkit no longer updates anymore either, so it's just dead now. I'm really sorry—I hate it too—but this is something we're all just going to have to learn to live with.

[steve]

...but not anymore?

[Sephitian]

But not anymore. Nothing would launch this morning and had to reset.

[eichiban]

Some of you already mentioned this, but from my point of view, it looks more like some W10 issue more than anything else. I guess it just probably those bots trying to analize and harvest everything you do and have on your PC since Microsoft thought it wants part of the data mining cake that the other big ones are having.

Hardly ever happened to my Solus Linux, that the client fails. Well, it also it got its own problems like never being able of launching some games and some tweaks on Proton to resolve the problems are quite out of my knowlegde (which is very basic, I should add)

[steve]

Even if this problem only arises with Windows (and not Linux), that doesn't really make it a "Windows problem" more than a "Steam problem." Several of us are experiencing this same behavior, particularly the part where Steam won't launch (or "launches" only as a background process, with the Service refusing to start). If I saw anything like this with other applications, I'd be more likely to consider Windows as the culprit. But only Steam is acting this way and it acts this way for a lot of us (and frequently for each of us, it seems from these reports). I don't know if Valve reads these forum posts, but I do think this is their problem to be working on, not ours and (until Valve discovers the bug is in Windows) not Microsoft's.

Do we know if Valve is even aware of this issue?

[Clear Crossroads]

No, it's not just a Steam problem. It *does* affect other applications. On my end, Photoshop 7.0 and any game made in RPG Maker (even wholly outside of Steam) are affected. Also, the fact that it locks us out of restarting Windows and forces us to have to hold down the power button for a hard reset is completely outside of Steam's jurisdiction. The problem does not originate with Steam. Steam is just one of the most easily noticeable applications to be affected by this problem. For most of us, it MIGHT AS WELL be a Steam problem, because Steam (and games launched from within Steam) are the only things affected because, for most of us, we don't really have games outside of Steam anymore. I'm sure that if you were to try to launch games that you installed with hardcopy disks that have nothing to do with Steam, the same problem would persist, hence the RPG Maker games. Also, there may be more than one culprit causing this problem, but I know for absolute certain that, on my end, it's being caused by SCP drivers for my DS3. This would make sense, as all of these affected programs (except for Photoshop? I'm not sure what's up with that) are trying to find a controller, and they get stuck on that task because of the faulty SCP drivers, and then they just hang forever trying to get past that controller blockage. Even Steam itself tries to detect the controller for its Big Picture mode. And then Windows can't restart because it can't access the controller to shut it down, so that hangs too. This is all "a Steam problem" insofar as this does affect Steam, and will therefore give the user problems with Steam, but that's only a symptom, not the source. A really big symptom—so big, in fact, that it gives the impression that it's a Steam problem proper—but a symptom nevertheless.

[steve]

Good points. I would disagree about whether or not an app bug can interfere with shutdown, however. Yes, a perfect OS would always shut down, no matter what a well-behaved application did. But applications aren't always well behaved. Any that require elevated privileges to run can also corrupt system structures, if they don't self-police.

Given your other issues, my guess is that the problem is due to applications misbehaving, probably in the same way. If this calls for a fix from Microsoft, they are going to be in the same relationship to Valve and Adobe as Valve and Adobe are to us. That is, Valve and Adobe (and anyone else whose app makes this happen) need to get involved, find a way to reproduce the problem and, if it cannot be dealt with by them, then report it to Microsoft. Given that ti involves a Steam service (a piece of software I would hazard to guess most gamers don't even know exists), it's already at a level of complexity that makes it impractical for us Steam customers to solve on our own.

I'd be glad to cooperate with Valve and try to help them reproduce it so they can debug it and/or take it up with Microsoft. But to do that, we need Valve to get involved. Any thoughts on how we can do that?

[Tokoyami]

I have the same problem for more than a year now, and it's only when i use Steam.
When the problem appeared i formatted and did a clean Windows install with only the bare minimum (drivers) and Steam.

And it did the same, computer slow down, freeze, and if i wait too much before restarting, restarting get stuck too and i need to manually restart.
After some time thinking about what could be the cause of this i decided to not use Steam (deactivated auto start with windows) and the problem stopped, i could keep my computer on for months without restarting like i used too.

But again during this time i would never launch steam, so for me it's a problem with Steam.
Maybe a conflict with Windows, some drivers, or something else who knows, but if i don't use Steam im fine. The problem start with Steam, after that everything is affected.

Im using SCP drivers too, but for me it's not the cause of the problem, with or without them steam keep freezing.

I did not find any solution, but i observed this in my case :

If i launch the restart action soon enough, when the first sign of slow down/freezing appear i don't need to manually restart.

When i combine watching a video in streaming (youtube) + exploring things like the market, my profile, my inventory on Steam it instantly start to freeze/slow down my computer.

During the last Lunar Sale if i tried to open the page with all the emojis (rat and pig) with the steam app it would instantly freeze.
But if i did the same with the web browser in a game (shift + tab) no problem.

I can avoid things that will force me to restart on the spot, but sooner or later i need to restart if i used Steam.

[Clear Crossroads]

I could be mistaken, but I imagine that, when you've deactivated Steam and aren't using it, you're never launching any programs that try to interact with your controller on startup. If so, then this is probably why it's not happening. However, that said, I find it very interesting that you say that this still happens even when you don't have any SCP drivers installed. That's... definitely a wrench in the cogs... I don't know what to make of that.

Also, your computer slowing down... I'm inclined to think (though, again, I could be mistaken) that this must be a separate issue, because that doesn't happen for me, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone else report that particular symptom.

[Tokoyami]

When i deactivated Steam on startup, i did use my controller on occasion with a emulator i think, not 100% sure.
But like i said when i formatted with only Steam installed the problem was still present.

After reading again your old messages, if you can unstuck your app by stopping and restarting the SCP service, my issue is probably different than yours, my bad.
Because for me the only option is to reboot, and if i wait too much, the reboot process gets stuck.

[Clear Crossroads]

Yeah, I think that it sounds like a different issue, but it also seems to have a lot of cross-over. Like, they're very similar problems. It's really hard to say for sure, though. And, of course, anyone who actually is godlike enough to figure this out is probably too busy, like, making money and having a life to lower themselves to this thread. lol.

[Braden]

I am also experiencing this issue. When it happens...

* Seemingly any game or program that uses opengl will not launch, however, it will show up in the process list in task manager, happily sucking up memory
* Steam will not launch
* Computer hangs for eternity on shutdown, bluescreens on restart if you let it spin its wheels for long enough
* Restarting is the only workaround, but the problem happens so often now that I basically have to manual power off and reboot any time I want to play a game, render a video, or do much of anything.

[Braden]

I should point out that software rendered games also fail to fully launch. Half-Life, for example, will throw up a dialog box notifying you that it's starting in software mode if it fails to launch the first time. Still hangs for eternity. I've yet to find a real pattern to this, but it definitely doesn't seem to have much of anything to do with the GPU.

[Sephitian]

Games that work fine while this "error" is happening, Diablo 3, Borderlands 3, Factorio.

Diablo 3 through battlenet app
Borderlands 3 through epicgame app
Factorio through steam app

[Braden]

I found an interesting, PC-crashing litmus test to see if this issue is happening.

kill dwm.exe

it will either flash your screen black while the OS restarts the window manager if windows is behaving normally, or it will completely hardlock the OS

So it seems to be a hardware/firmware-related issue

[Iceira]

OP do you have newest bios update Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P motherboard.
there are 3 revision of that board its impossible to know what you have.
and i think not the first time read that FX-4100 require update. to diffrent games.

most have auto update tool app in start menu that can check this. included DL drivers.
and you are actual the only one that try tell spec.