Memory overflow caused by steam client, any idea how to fix it?

[EinKelly]

Each time I launch the steam client, the process "steam client webhelper" quickly starts to eat up all the free memory spaces in just several seconds - and this quickly triggers a crash of the whole Windows and my computer goes the blue screen.

I just can't imagine why the hell this damn process could be capable to consume 12GB of memory within a minute!!

I've tried reinstalling steam, update the windows itself, and restart. Nothing worked. Nothing! Only deleting the webhelper executable brought me some peace back for a while at yesterday night, but this didn't last long - the catastrophe comes back when I woke up this morning.

Does anyone of you guys know further solutions? Please help!! Thanks in advance!!

I am now using a razer blade 15 advanced, the model with i7 8750H and GTX 1060. My Windows is now version 18363.720, and the version code is 1909.

[EinKelly]

Първоначално публикувано от FrankNoWar:

I contacted Steam support on Friday as well, but their response time is getting long these days.

My response is back. The support guy said it's something wrong with my computer, faint.
It seems that Steam might not consider get to the bottom of this issue unless more victims pop out.

[mimizukari]

Първоначално публикувано от mozza:

I have 4GBs of memory and yet it runs fine on my pc.

4GB is still pretty low, if you run any game without pagefile you'll go OOM.

[crunchyfrog]

Първоначално публикувано от EinKelly:

Първоначално публикувано от FrankNoWar:

I contacted Steam support on Friday as well, but their response time is getting long these days.

My response is back. The support guy said it's something wrong with my computer, faint.
It seems that Steam might not consider get to the bottom of this issue unless more victims pop out.

You do have to understand that support are beyond busy right now. The whole world is at home with many playing games, and to add to that Steam support staff are greatly reduced too. You can imagine how bad it is for them with tickets, cant you?

BUt in any case, they're not wrong. It is your end as far as they can tell. If loads more people started reporting problems, then they'd pass it onto the devs. But with 23 million CONCURRENT users that we had a couple of days ago, even a coupld of hundred cases would still be miniscule.

You are best served in any case doing everything you can your end to get to the bottom of this, or at worst, eliminating all possibilities.

I wonder if this is indeed due to the most recent update as users have similarly had a symptom that I've seen for years where the store or nothing loads - so I'd follow what Dr Shadowds says about copying your steamapps and userdata folders out the way, uninstalling steam then reinstalling it and replacing those two folders and see how you get on.

As that should cure a corrupted install.

[mimizukari]

Steam uses no more than .5GB RAM for me, but if you have under 8GB RAM you will go OOM, this is your computer that's the problem.


There's no issue like this on the stable build from what I can see.

[Bullet]

I tried completely reinstalling the Steam Client. I'm still getting steamwebclient.exe crashing. Steam is completely unusable for me right now.

[goat_lord_666]

Първоначално публикувано от EinKelly:

Първоначално публикувано от FrankNoWar:

I contacted Steam support on Friday as well, but their response time is getting long these days.

My response is back. The support guy said it's something wrong with my computer, faint.
It seems that Steam might not consider get to the bottom of this issue unless more victims pop out.

I've alos logged a support call - i'll post here if they tell me any different

[goat_lord_666]

Първоначално публикувано от crunchyfrog:

I wonder if this is indeed due to the most recent update as users have similarly had a symptom that I've seen for years where the store or nothing loads - so I'd follow what Dr Shadowds says about copying your steamapps and userdata folders out the way, uninstalling steam then reinstalling it and replacing those two folders and see how you get on.

As that should cure a corrupted install.

Tried this multiple times, even deleted all my game files. Nothing changes

Първоначално публикувано от Bullet:

I tried completely reinstalling the Steam Client. I'm still getting steamwebclient.exe crashing. Steam is completely unusable for me right now.

I can run it in big picture mode as long as I disable the browser with the following flags added to the shortcut

-no-browser -bigpicture

[Bullet]

Първоначално публикувано от 80s_guy:

I can run it in big picture mode as long as I disable the browser with the following flags added to the shortcut

-no-browser -bigpicture

Thanks! This works for me, too. Not an ideal way to run when sitting at my desktop, but preferable to not being able to use Steam at all. I also submitted a ticket.

[FrankNoWar]

The problem kind of resolved itself. Not sure why.

[crunchyfrog]

Първоначално публикувано от FrankNoWar:

The problem kind of resolved itself. Not sure why.

I'm beginning to suspect it's not so much a Steam error, as possibly a Windows 10 one (or Windows 8). I've recently bought a new laptop, having been away from any sort of PC for a few years.

When setting up, I had to learn a few new things, and one thing I did find out is that there's a bug in Windows 10 with laptop energy saving on hard drives (and possibly memory). It skyrockets for no apparent reason.

So I wonder if this is something similar?

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

Първоначално публикувано от crunchyfrog:

Първоначално публикувано от FrankNoWar:

The problem kind of resolved itself. Not sure why.

I'm beginning to suspect it's not so much a Steam error, as possibly a Windows 10 one (or Windows 8). I've recently bought a new laptop, having been away from any sort of PC for a few years.

When setting up, I had to learn a few new things, and one thing I did find out is that there's a bug in Windows 10 with laptop energy saving on hard drives (and possibly memory). It skyrockets for no apparent reason.

So I wonder if this is something similar?

TBH it could be anything, since I see couple discussions in the past about having memory leak, and hard to say what the reason due to these issues.

Could be bad updates, corrupted files, anti virus, or etc messing with files, or permissions, could be system motherboard BIOS related, could be faulty hardware, and example you gave is also a possibly as well, only way to get closer to the answer, if running down the list of what could've cause it to happen.

[crunchyfrog]

Първоначално публикувано от Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

Първоначално публикувано от crunchyfrog:

I'm beginning to suspect it's not so much a Steam error, as possibly a Windows 10 one (or Windows 8). I've recently bought a new laptop, having been away from any sort of PC for a few years.

When setting up, I had to learn a few new things, and one thing I did find out is that there's a bug in Windows 10 with laptop energy saving on hard drives (and possibly memory). It skyrockets for no apparent reason.

So I wonder if this is something similar?

TBH it could be anything, since I see couple discussions in the past about having memory leak, and hard to say what the reason due to these issues.

Could be bad updates, corrupted files, anti virus, or etc messing with files, or permissions, could be system motherboard BIOS related, could be faulty hardware, and example you gave is also a possibly as well, only way to get closer to the answer, if running down the list of what could've cause it to happen.

I certainly don't disagree at all.

From my perspective coming back into things, I thought it worth sharing my thoughts, as it seems quite a damaging issue. Memory leaks and such are always absolute bastards to track down.

So you're absolutely right.

[FrankNoWar]

Първоначално публикувано от crunchyfrog:

I'm beginning to suspect it's not so much a Steam error, as possibly a Windows 10 one (or Windows 8). I've recently bought a new laptop, having been away from any sort of PC for a few years.

I’m using Linux, so this kind of rules out anything OS related.
The Steam application is basically a Web Browser (a heavily modified Chromium, as I understand it), so the way the “Web Pages” are handled by the server can have an huge impact on individual clients.

[crunchyfrog]

Първоначално публикувано от FrankNoWar:

Първоначално публикувано от crunchyfrog:

I'm beginning to suspect it's not so much a Steam error, as possibly a Windows 10 one (or Windows 8). I've recently bought a new laptop, having been away from any sort of PC for a few years.

I’m using Linux, so this kind of rules out anything OS related.
The Steam application is basically a Web Browser (a heavily modified Chromium, as I understand it), so the way the “Web Pages” are handled by the server can have an huge impact on individual clients.

A fair point. It was just a guess.

[Bullet]

Ah! Progress! I tried disabling WPAD on my network, and the memory issue went away! Steam is working completely normally. I turn WPAD back on, it breaks again. Completely repeatable.

Check if you can ping wpad. If so, see if you can disable it and try again.