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Zquads 21 Dec @ 4:13am
Steam won’t start – “Updating Steam, Verifying Installation” disappears instantly (temporary Safe Mode fix no longer works)
Hello,

I’m experiencing a persistent issue where Steam (and all Steam games) will not start properly.

What happens
When I try to launch Steam, I briefly see a popup saying:
“Updating Steam, Verifying Installation”
This appears for less than a second and then disappears. After that, nothing happens visually.

In Task Manager, I can see one Steam background process starting, but it does not use any resources and does not open the Steam client.

What I’ve already tried
    []Restarting my PC multiple times[]Repairing Steam client files[]Reinstalling Steam[]Completely formatting my PC and reinstalling Windows from scratch

None of these steps resolved the issue.

Temporary workaround (no longer works)
Yesterday, I found a temporary workaround:
    []Boot into Windows Safe Mode[]Install Steam and a game while in Safe Mode
  • Restart back into normal mode

This allowed Steam to launch normally, so I initially thought the issue was resolved.

Unfortunately, today the same problem returned, and the Safe Mode workaround no longer works either.

Additional info
    []One Steam background process appears in Task Manager but remains idle[]No error messages are shown[]The issue persists even after a full Windows reinstall[]This makes me suspect a driver, service, or software conflict

At this point I’m completely out of ideas.

Has anyone experienced this before or knows what could cause Steam to fail silently like this? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Zquads
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Showing 1-5 of 5 comments
Dranak 21 Dec @ 4:17am 
Remove controller from the system and reboot pc and see if this is the case, we are steam user here, there is noway in hell we will know what you have attached USB device to the PC here at steam user forum.
Last edited by Dranak; 21 Dec @ 4:18am
#1
Zquads 21 Dec @ 4:28am 
Originally posted by Dranak:
Remove controller from the system and reboot pc and see if this is the case, we are steam user here, there is noway in hell we will know what you have attached USB device to the PC here at steam user forum.

I literally spent more than a day trying to figure this out. I never expected the solution to be something as silly as unplugging a controller. This completely solved my problem. Honestly, thank you so much.
#2
Enzossal 21 Dec @ 4:42am 
What an incredibly stupid setup! Why?! I spent a whole day on this, reinstalling Steam more than once. I even reinstalled my entire OS, and the same problem persisted. But I never expected that seeing this post would solve the issue. What an incredibly stupid prerequisite! Why?!!!!!
#3
SoLit 21 Dec @ 4:46am 
Your a bloody G mates, spent 2 days trying to fix this for it to be the controller.
#4
Hyperversum 21 Dec @ 5:03am 
Why is this happening all of a sudden. It's doing the same with my controller and the client just doesn't work even if I connect the controller AFTER launching it while it's disconnected
#5
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All Discussions > Steam Forums > Help and Tips > Topic Details
Date Posted: 21 Dec @ 4:13am
Posts: 5
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