Unable to access Steam - shortcut and exe dont work

[Cyb]

I have been able to update and access steam on my PC. My wife however who is also on a Win 7 64 bit system cannot access steam. On double clicking the desktop shortcut nothing happens. When I look in the task manager it is not running in the background. If I run as an administrator it makes no difference. I then try accessing via the exe direct in the steam directory and it still does nothing. Anyone else getting this issue since this update?

[Average Power Ranger Fan]

My wife is having the same exact issue. Nothing is happening when she double clicks on her shortcut and no sign of steam through the task manager. The only difference between our situations is that the update for me is loading a ridiculous snail's pace. It's taking forever. If you get any information let me know!

[Yammerhant]

Same problem here. I hadn't launched Steam in a long while; when I started it, it immediately began an update, then the update progress bar just disappeared around 26% or so. When I looked in the task manager, there was no sign of Steam under the applications or processes tabs.

I tried reinstalling it, but exactly the same thing happened.

I have submitted a report to Steam Support but I hear they take a while to respond....

[Cyb]

The solution for me was to go into the Steam folder and delete all the folders and files except steam.exe and the Steamapps folder. I then clicked on the steam.exe to go through the process to re-install and update. This it did and my wife was able to get into steam. The downside is that quite a number of games had to be re-downloaded that put a dent in my monthly download allowance. That advice was via a Steam forum super user and not the official steam help that still havent answered my query.

[Yammerhant]

I followed the Steam Support instructions titled "How to remove and refresh your Steam files" and fixed my problem.

Basically, I went to C:\Program Files\Steam\ and deleted everything except for the Steamapps and Userdata folders and the Steam application, then rebooted. Steam came up after the reboot and downloaded new versions of the deleted files and now everything's back to normal.

[golden]

It happened when I put two shortcuts for steam which broke the shortcut and deleted my games