The Steam client won't open for me. I'm using Windows 7 64-bit. What happens is that when I click the Steam executable the normal pop-ups open. It checks for updates and then connects to my account. After it looks like it connects to my account everything stops working and the client does not open. In task manager it says that nothing relating to Steam is running.

This happened after an issue with The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. Apparently, in that game there can be an error when trying to run it on a 64-bit system. Some people have fixed that problem by updating their system. Which I did. After, I needed to restart, which I also did, and since doing so this Steam error has started to happen. I tried to do a system restore five times at various times and for some inexplicable reason the process never completes following the restart. I tried this apparent .blob fix I read about on the Steam forums and it didn't work either. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Steam and the same problem continues to happen.

So does anyone know what's going on?

Have you tried running it as an administrator? Is that even a thing with Windows 7? (I'm on Vista)

I had some random PC troubles recently and now Steam doesn't open unless I run it as an admin. Otherwise it gives me some "must have 200MB free on your hard drive" error.

@theht:

I tried that and I got a message that essentially told me that I'm not allowed to run Steam with any compatibility options selected.

@jasonr86: Hm, I don't know what else to tell ya. Here are some other folks with similar problems I found on the Steam forums, but you may have already come across those.

Reinstall Steam?

If by stops working you mean the window goes white then just wait it out, I get that whenever I use steam chat. Also, does Steam not show up in processes after the login?

Shot in the dark, but maybe check DEP settings?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/change-data-execution-prevention-settings

There are a few games that I've seen this mess with, often without any overt clue to what is happening.

Did you make sure to go into the processes tab in the task manager and stop the Steam.exe process from running? Occasionally I can't open steam either, and I have to dig into the processes to shut it down. If you've done that, then I would just reinstall it like someone suggested. I think it gives you the option to keep the game files there, so it shouldn't really take too long.

Thanks guys. I'll try some of these after work and let you know how it goes.

Ok guys, I tried all the above and nothing worked. However, I did finally make the system restore executable work and restored my system back to when Steam was working. And, now, finally it works. Vanishing of Ethan Carter doesn't but I don't even care anymore. The system restore didn't work because I needed to disable my antivirus software while it ran.

Thanks for the suggestions though dudes.

How long has it been since you formatted and reinstalled Windows? Sounds like it may be time, Windows installations that are a few years old can get pretty crusty.

@mb:

I've had this laptop for about 5 years and haven't reinstalled the OS. I would, but I don't think I have a disc to do it. It's been a while since I've installed an OS though. Do I even need a disk anymore?

Lord I sound old.

@jasonr86: It may have a recovery partition on the hard drive. Just Google the model of your laptop plus recovery and see what pops up, it should be fairly straightforward.

Maybe try and disable your antivirus? Same thing happened to my old PC and disabling it helped. Good luck!