my steam is complety broken because of a skin, i need help

[masquerade]

i always had fluidity for steam installed, pretty sure it was 0.4.8 but not sure. one day i woke up and my steam had logged me out, then when i couldn't log in because when i put my correct correct credentials it started to connect to server but never actually connected. after this, i uninstalled steam and reinstalled it, then it worked again, but i had no skin, then i redownloaded the skin and when i changed the skin, i got logged out again and the exact same situation happened again. but now the twist is, when i uninstall steam and reinstall it it comes pre-downloaded with fluidity, even when my pc has absolutely no trace of the skin, neither in steam's files nor elsewhere. and the worst thing is that with this bugged steam i can't open it in normal mode, but am forced to open it in big picture mode, which with the fluidity skin doesn't have the steam options until you log in, meaning i cant put steam's default skin. welp, if i got anything from this situation, it'd be DO NOT USE FLUIDITY FOR STEAM (atleast for now), what do i do? i don't have any more ideas of what to do, i already tried renaming steam's folder name, searched around for fluidity everywhere on my pc, everything. man i just want to play pizza tower ;-;

[masquerade]

hey @wynters! thanks for the help!

running steam installer after removing steam completely: yes i have, i even went to program files (x86) to check, and there was no trace of steam there, and i remember when i reinstalled steam and it had no skin but worked, i had to re-download games, meaning everything was erased, not only that but i also installed different installers just incase that'd work, which it sadly did not


looking at task manager: i looked in my task manager, and there where 7 different iconless "steam client webhelper" with one taking an astounding 81.6 MB of memory. might that help figure out what's going on?

also, have an award for helping me :)

[Iceira]

You never explan want to get ride of skin and return to steam default, ( whatever that is , sense they change over time with core update ) same as what you have issue with now after update, i bet.

ps.
there is many guides with how to guide reset steam. ( recommend move games folder out first then take backup of current skin and steam , more a head up with userdata inside steam, if you dont know what backup is then, im sure other helper will explan every detail, i will not.

[masquerade]

Originally posted by Wynters:

Originally posted by masquerade:

hey @wynters! thanks for the help!

running steam installer after removing steam completely: yes i have, i even went to program files (x86) to check, and there was no trace of steam there, and i remember when i reinstalled steam and it had no skin but worked, i had to re-download games, meaning everything was erased, not only that but i also installed different installers just incase that'd work, which it sadly did not


looking at task manager: i looked in my task manager, and there where 7 different iconless "steam client webhelper" with one taking an astounding 81.6 MB of memory. might that help figure out what's going on?

also, have an award for helping me :)

Thanks. :csdsmile:

So, in the task Manager, I take it that you are looking at the "Processes" section and those should have a logo not blank, but the total is about 7-9 processes for the Steam Client WebHelper.

Do you have Steam run on startup? If so, we might have a clue. Although, we may already have a clue, just want to make sure where next to look.

Also, if you do not have Steam running on system startup, take a look at the processes command line (you may need to enable the command line → right-click top of "Task Manager" lower banner (where it says name, type, etc) and check off "Command Line" and see if it has a broken path.

heya!

yea i was looking at processes section, so the multiple clients are normal but they being blank isn't. that might help figure out what's going on

and yes, steam was set to run on startup, so that's a step in the right direction. i have also tried to look at set command line, but since i didn't understand it that well, i went to steam's properties, because that's the closest thing i know based on your description and couldn't find it, am i even in the right place?

[masquerade]

Originally posted by Wynters:

Originally posted by masquerade:

heya!

yea i was looking at processes section, so the multiple clients are normal but they being blank isn't. that might help figure out what's going on

and yes, steam was set to run on startup, so that's a step in the right direction. i have also tried to look at set command line, but since i didn't understand it that well, i went to steam's properties, because that's the closest thing i know based on your description and couldn't find it, am i even in the right place?

Perhaps.

If Steam runs on Startup, go into "Task Manager" and there is a tab called "Startup". You are looking for Steam Client and/or the Steam Client WebHelper as seen as a blank icon. If it is blank, the path is broken. Any blank icons in that tab will cause malfunctions.

okay, so this is really weird. steam itself has got an icon, but everything else underneath it hasn't. this includes 2 conhosts, gldriverquery and gldriverquery64, 6 webhelpers, vulkandriverquery and vulkandriverquery64. all of them are marked under steam (13), and all aside from steam itself have no icon, with only steam and the webhelpers having publishers, being valve corporation.

[masquerade]

Originally posted by Wynters:

Originally posted by masquerade:

okay, so this is really weird. steam itself has got an icon, but everything else underneath it hasn't. this includes 2 conhosts, gldriverquery and gldriverquery64, 6 webhelpers, vulkandriver and vulkandriver64. all of them are marked under steam (13), and all aside from steam itself have no icon, with only steam and the webhelpers having publishers, being valve corporation.

And the paths for these blank icons... They should all point to the disk where the client is located, but not specifically the same path, but the same disk. All the WebHelper processes should be similar to this: Steam\bin\cef\cef.win7x64

okay so only the conhosts and steam itself i'm alowed to look at properties, steam's properties say it's in programarchive(x86) but when i try to look at any of both conhost's properties an error message saying "windows cannot find '\??\C:\WINDOWS\system32\conhost.exe'. make sure you typed the name correctly, then try again.". i have also tried closing and opening task manager to see if the conhosts disappear but they are still there.

[masquerade]

Originally posted by masquerade:

Originally posted by Wynters:

And the paths for these blank icons... They should all point to the disk where the client is located, but not specifically the same path, but the same disk. All the WebHelper processes should be similar to this: Steam\bin\cef\cef.win7x64

okay so only the conhosts and steam itself i'm alowed to look at properties, steam's properties say it's in programarchive(x86) but when i try to look at any of both conhost's properties an error message saying "windows cannot find '\??\C:\WINDOWS\system32\conhost.exe'. make sure you typed the name correctly, then try again.". i have also tried closing and opening task manager to see if the conhosts disappear but they are still there.

also opening file location does not work for conhost

[masquerade]

Originally posted by Wynters:

This is sticky. It is a broken registry path. I am almost sure. I cannot advise to check lines in the registry. It should be simple as fixing those stupid " " because I have a funny feeling it's not targeted properly there. I would rather tell you to attempt sfc scan and DISM fixes, which are also long shots, but safer without knowing your expertise in system management, specifically the registry.

To me, it seems that the skin messed up the paths.

the simplest solutions are the ones that work, as they say. it worked, it finally worked. i cant thank you enough man, now everything's back to normal. so, as a thanks, have this expensive reward. it can't thank you enough but it's something. thank you

[masquerade]

Originally posted by masquerade:

the simplest solutions are the ones that work, as they say. it worked, it finally worked. i cant thank you enough man, now everything's back to normal. so, as a thanks, have this expensive reward. it can't thank you enough but it's something. thank you

the only drawback is that now i'm scared to download steam skins, but hey it's better than losing all my games so