Failed to add firewall exception for steamwebhelper.exe

[Qwerty Drive]

I started getting this Error today in windows event viewer. But the only way i can seem to stop it is forcing steam to run in administator mode

Failed to add firewall exception for E:\Steam\bin\steamwebhelper.exe

https://s12.postimg.org/anhx95tbx/Untitled.png

[darkdesert]

same issue, webhelper.exe causes brand new Dell XPS w/ Win10 Pro to bluescreen every couple minutes. Beautiful design. Event Viewer always points to webhelper.exe not being able to communicate through windows firewall port. If I rename webhelper.exe and then kill it in task manager, I can at least play for the night. Steam needs to get their head out of their butt. I really love how it installs itself over and over; it kills my pc, then it reboots, as soon as windows comes up, steams reinstalls the entire package, sometimes it makes me Agree to terms again. I even created custom firewall rules to allow it though, no avail. I just hope Steam and its associated crashes of windows hasn't corrupted my drive or data.

[↑↑↓↓←→←→BASelect]

Автор сообщения: darkdesert

same issue, webhelper.exe causes brand new Dell XPS w/ Win10 Pro to bluescreen every couple minutes. Beautiful design. Event Viewer always points to webhelper.exe not being able to communicate through windows firewall port. If I rename webhelper.exe and then kill it in task manager, I can at least play for the night. Steam needs to get their head out of their butt. I really love how it installs itself over and over; it kills my pc, then it reboots, as soon as windows comes up, steams reinstalls the entire package, sometimes it makes me Agree to terms again. I even created custom firewall rules to allow it though, no avail. I just hope Steam and its associated crashes of windows hasn't corrupted my drive or data.

Is steam installed yet? Can you boot into safe mode and uninstall steam.
Blue screens usually means bad hardware or bad drivers.
Are all your drivers upto date? Downloaded from dells website. Don't use the cd that came with the pc as them drivers could be months to years old.
Have you installed any new hardware since installing steam?

[The Giving One]

BSOD errors are not the fault of Steam or a Steam issue, but pretty serious. They are hardware and OS related, as the good Soul Assassin suggested...drivers or hardware that is also.

http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/11/

[darkdesert]

I never had a crash until I installed Steam. I agree, at first I suspected video driver, but everything is up to date. It even crashes me when I am not playing, I suspect because I renamed the file. It thinks it has been tampered with or altered. Like I said, my pc reboots, Steam reinstalls itself (this behavior is after renaming the webhelper.exe file to old). It's maddening. Because it happens so often, I was able to find it in Event Log. It is webhelper.exe. It somehow causes a kernel panic. When I removed Steam fully, I have no problems. So then I was like, okay, it's the windows firewall, I just have to allow it, so I browsed to the webhelper.exe and allow all traffic through. Still crashes. When I get home from work, later tonight, I will post the actual kernel panic error it causes. I would really like to figure it out. I bought Civ 6.

[The Giving One]

Автор сообщения: darkdesert

I never had a crash until I installed Steam. I agree, at first I suspected video driver, but everything is up to date. .

Everything is up to date HOW exactly, by using Windows update only ? If you are using Windows update to update your drivers...first mistake right there.

Post the model and model number of this computer. If custom built, post the exact motherboard instead, including any revision number for that board, if that applies.

[darkdesert]

I know Steam is on millions of computers, that's why I am perplexed by this. After many Google searches about webhelper.exe, I have found many such cases where webhelper has caused various issues. I admit, I am a little mythed about how it knows that it has been tampered with and just reinstalls. I even removed my antivirus because it takes over firewall control. I just read about changing Steam permissions to admin, so I will try that tonight.

[↑↑↓↓←→←→BASelect]

I know when i had a dell with windows ME on it my dell kept BSOD on a weekly basis. Even after a fresh install. I dubbed windows ME as many errors. This was many years ago so maybe dell got better but i doubt it.

[darkdesert]

I get what you are saying. When I updated the video driver, I went to nvidia directly, searched for the specific model, downloaded and installed it. I then confirmed the driver version and date.

It could very well be a driver conflict. It is odd, that once I kill webhelper.exe it no longer crashes.

I have been examining this issue for about a week now...it's just frustrating.

If I had to guess it's some kind of software conflict that at some level causes a kernel panic crash.

It's a Dell XPS 15inch laptop, model 9550, samsung 950 pro, 4k screen.

I did leave some of the bloatware on there, I did grab some drivers directly from Dell. But I also went to Samsung, nvidia, and Intel directly also.

[darkdesert]

I used it for about 2 months with no crashes. Then one night, I decided I wanted Civ 6. I have never used Steam before. So I created the account, bought the game, then bam, bluescreen after bluescreen. I finally got pissed, started troubleshooting. I identified webhelper.exe as the culprit. When I stop that program from running in the background, pc runs all night without crashing. But the next day, Steam knows I tampered with that file, it runs an integrity check, then reinstalls itself. Webhelper.exe is back and it will crash my pc...as simple as that.

Now maybe webhelper doesn't like my pc hardware, but it conflicts and then the kernel panic, and Event Viewer points to the firewall exception not being there.

I don't know, that as far into the process as I have gotten.

I do appreciate everyone's comments.

There is just something it doesn't like.

[The Giving One]

Sorry...had a posting cooldown that just now ended...

I was not talking about GPU drivers, in case there was any confusion from my part. I was talking about other device drivers.

Did you get them from here and make sure they are up to date, if this is the right computer ?

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/xps-15-9550-laptop/drivers/advanced

And always post if your OS is 32 or 64 bit also, unless I missed it. Windows 10 is an incomplete answer otherwise, please.

[Bumbefly (we/All)]

Darkdesert (and other Ppl)
Did you try the wok-around from the 3rd post in this very thread? Obviously for Windows 10 (7 and up) there's a little difference (see below the quote). This quoted one is for XP and Vista.

Автор сообщения: Dy'Naer

As a temporary workaround ; copy the one located there :

"insert correct path"\Steam\bin\cef\cef.winxp\

to

"insert correct path"\Steam\bin\

[ - - ]

Windows 7 and up need to copy to (maybe create folder cef.win7 in bin)
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\bin\cef\cef.win7\steamwebhelper.exe

No new firewall rule should be necessary to create but by all means do so if this work-around does not work right away.

I myself do "not" suffer this issue for i have the Steamwebhelper.exe both in bin and in bin\cef\cef.win7 directories.

[darkdesert]

Hey guys, I will be troubleshooting this pretty hard this weekend. I spent more time going through the event viewer, specifically system logs. So when webhelper.exe complains about the firewall, at the same time, I get warning event ID 219 Kernel-PnP, driver WUDFRd failed to load for the device ACPI\INT3400. Then I spent time in device management and figured out INT3400 is registered to Intel DPTF or Dynamic Power and Thermal Framework. Then I read about the Dell XPS 15 (model 9550--which is my laptop) about all kinds of issues with DPTF. I also remembered that I put the power settings in Windows into High Performance, then manually tweaked a lot of things. So DPTF likes to throttle stuff down to prevent CPU's from getting hot and preserve battery life. It's possible the windows settings are conflicting with DPTF or even possibly another Dell power management program. Will look deeper at them when I get home from work tonight. I also remember doing a BIOS update. I did not verify my BIOS settings after update...a big no no. Also worth mentioning is I have Norton Internet installed which takes over as the firewall. While I disabled the firewall in Norton for testing, I did not technically uninstall it. I need to give that a try also.

Another note, after reading the forums on Dell XPS 15, it seems like they are riddled with issues. For example, when I first got it, I upgraded the HD to Samsung 950 pro, there are tons of articles discussing BSOD because of either using AHCI vs Samsung NVMe driver. At this point, most recommend using the Samsung driver for better performance. When I first bought it, that was not the case. Both the Intel and Windows AHCI driver were more stable. It took Samsung awhile to fine tune their driver. So I need to change that driver as well, which might mean a clean install.

So here is my question, why is it when I run Steam and webhelper.exe runs, webhelper.exe seems to cause a driver fault related to the DPTF?

If I manually kill webhelper.exe and then delete the file, I can play for all night and no crash. In fact, at that point, I can run anything on the PC and it is stable. But then I do a shutdown and reboot. Steam then repairs the package, webhelper.exe is back, PC will eventually BSOD at some point.

I don't get it. But I have some ideas. Last night, I updated DPTF driver. I did that by right clicking and let windows update it. Today, I noticed Dell has that driver, so I will install Dell's if the problem continues. If that doesn't work, I will try to disable and uninstall DPTF.

System is Win10 Pro 64-bit.

[The Giving One]

Автор сообщения: darkdesert

mentioning is I have Norton Internet installed which takes over as the firewall.

Disabled is not always good enough for Norton, or child processes of Norton, such as Norton Online Backup, for example. They conflict also.

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

McAfee Anti-virus
Nod32 Anti-virus *
Norton/Symantec Anti-virus
Panda Anti-virus

Norton is horrible.

http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/864960354202730196/#c864960354203825652
http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/348292957936793818/?tscn=1476505156#c348293073006152613
http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/392183857628513359/#c392184289304621591
http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/458607518209700397/?tscn=1453942737#c458607518210063348
http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/392184289304843029/?tscn=1458633705#c392184342868920447

[darkdesert]

I will fully remove Norton tonight so that we can rule that out. Out of curiosity, what do you guys use for AV?

[The Giving One]

Автор сообщения: darkdesert

I will fully remove Norton tonight so that we can rule that out. Out of curiosity, what do you guys use for AV?

I suggest Sophos or Avira, personally.

Norton may have done some damage, or a child process of Norton maybe (Norton Online Backup, for example) so further steps may be needed.

I also suggest you check the rest of that list.

Easy test...

Troubleshoot Steam in safe mode with networking. That gets around possible software conflicts with Steam.

EDIT...

BUT if Steam files have been damaged already, then this will not work either.