Steam is blocking PC Shutdown

[Pope Pourri]

Multi-year Steam member. Recently when shutting down PC, Steam won't close and it prevents PC from Shutting down. No games have been left open. Forces a manual shutdown. Windows 10. Any ideas?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

You should manually and properly EXIT each game client before you Restart/Shutdown. Not doing so can cause corruption with the game client, or the installed games.

[EMO GANGSTER]

it's best to shut it down beforehand you can lose things like I lost all my categories once when I didn't do it it was pain to remake all of them

[_I_]

yea, steam -> exit from tray or steam client
closing steams window does not exit steam

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Especially with Steam, cause I've had some instances where various VDF or ACF file getting corrupted when forcing a Restart/Shutdown with the game client still running; which can cause issues with Steam then later seeing where a game is supposed to be installed, or that the game file for steam (the ACF file) is messed up and the game needs to be verified before playing it again the next time, which can be a lengthy process if the game is rather large; like GTAV or RDR2 for example. So yea always exit out all of your game clients properly before doing an OS Restart/Shutdown to avoid future issues.

[Pope Pourri]

Will give it a try -thanks

[Pope Pourri]

It's a pain, but shutdown Steam every time is the answer. I wonder why the change?

[andreasaspenberg575]

you could just use hibernation rather than shutdown.

[Pocahawtness]

Originally posted by Conan the Librarian:

It's a pain, but shutdown Steam every time is the answer. I wonder why the change?

I shutdown my PC all the time with Steam open and it never prevents shutdown or has ever caused any corruption or any problem of any description.

I don't know why you are having the problem, but I would perhaps try re-installing Steam. Perhaps there is a damaged file?

[_I_]

Originally posted by Pocahawtness:

Originally posted by Conan the Librarian:

It's a pain, but shutdown Steam every time is the answer. I wonder why the change?

I shutdown my PC all the time with Steam open and it never prevents shutdown or has ever caused any corruption or any problem of any description.

I don't know why you are having the problem, but I would perhaps try re-installing Steam. Perhaps there is a damaged file?

sounds like windows is still set to use hibernate/sleep instead of shutdown as default
even tho it says shutdown, that not what its doing

try disabling windows fast startup
powercfg -h off as admin

[Pope Pourri]

Thanks all. Appears not to be Steam as some days it works and other requires a push of the bottom.

[Iron Knights]

Force Shutdown Click always worked for any open App. and even then, I think it was my laziness to close the app. properly, closed under normal timing.
Remove Steam from Startup perhaps ?

[Theisen]

Manually shutting down steam is possible. but that is not the core issue. I am having the same issue.

I have had steam for more then 10 years and always shutdown my computer while steam is in the background now in the past month it always blocks shutdown of windows 10. Never did that before in the last 10 years.

[Bravo Phantom]

+1

Yes. It's been a couple of days; maybe one or two weeks... if steam is open in the background and we shutdown --> (One app is preventing Windows from Shutdown.)

If I press Cancel to go back and close Steam, it is already gone. Not running in the background.

This didn't happen in all the years I've used Steam almost daily. We should report this to Steam, maybe the latest update of Steam has this bug.

[HypersleepyNaputunia]

maybe do a thorough virus scan too

[Bravo Phantom]

Nope. It is happening on a new fresh windows install as well
I actually tested it, before and after windows reinstall