Steam not opening? Here’s how to fix it

Steam not opening? We’ve been there! Here’s a quick guide on how to fix it

Steam not opening or failing to launch isn’t such a rare occurrence. It happened to all of us at least once or twice. There are various factors that can lead to Steam not opening. Firstly, there’s a chance our anti-virus programs mistakenly place the Steam in quarantine. Furthermore, a corrupt file may also cause launch failure.

Luckily, there are quite a few solutions to this problem. In this guide, we go over all of them. Hopefully, the first one works for you. However, sometimes we have to get a bit creative, so check out all four fixes we prepared for you.

Fix 1: End all processes

Our first solution is the simplest one. As they say, you have to walk before you run. Therefore, we should try this no-brainer fix before we dig deep into more technical and convoluted solutions.

As every IT person will ask you when you report a problem — “Have you tried turning it off and on?” The simplest solution is to end all processes related to Steam and then launch it again. However, we have to use the task manager to end all processes. That way, we will avoid some of them staying open and sabotaging the relaunch. When you don’t go through the task manager and just close the Steam, some programs don’t shut down properly, and they disrupt the launch, thus causing the application to fail to open.

The steps of this solution are fairly simple:

  1. Enter CTRL+ALT+Delete
  2. Select “Task Manager
  3. Select all Steam-related processes beginning with “Steam Client BootStrapper
  4. End these processes
  5. Launch Steam

After these five steps, our Steam not opening problem should be resolved. However, if it isn’t, there are a few more things we can try.

Fix 2: Run the program as an Administrator

It’s not a rare occurrence that an application demands administrative privileges to run it. Therefore, if the first fix didn’t work, try running Steam as an administrator.

  1. Right-click on the Steam client
  2. Click on “Run as administrator

Once we do this, we will gain administrative privileges. This means that we’ll be able both to read and write. If steam not opening is the result of this issue, after we run it as administrators, it will launch without any issues.

Fix 3: Changing the ClientRegistry.blob

The previous two solutions were simple troubleshooting approaches. If those don’t work, we have to resort to more complex solutions.

  1. Exit Steam
  2. End all tasks in the Task Manager
  3. Go to the Steam Directory
  4. It should be on the C partition, in “Program Files, under “Steam
  5. Find ClientRegistry.blob
  6. Rename the file by adding “old” before.blob — ‘‘ClientRegistryold.blob
  7. Relaunch Steam

This should work in most cases. However, if it doesn’t, complete the following two steps:

  1. Go back to the Steam Directory
  2. Find the file named “Steamerrorreporter.exe
  3. Run this application
  4. Relaunch Steam

Fix 4: Start over – Delete and Reinstall

The final resort, if none of the options above worked, is to start all over. Delete all Steam files and then re-install it. This takes quite a while, so we don’t recommend starting this process if you don’t have the time to finish it.

  1. Go to the Steam directory
  2. Find the file “Steam.exe” (Application)
  3. Find the file “SteamApps” (folder)
  4. Delete all files except those two
  5. Restart the computer
  6. Start Steam by using the “Run as administrator” option

When we do this, we are forcing the Steam application to download all deleted files again. After that, the app should start without any issues.