Steam Library crashing

AccidentalDenz

Lord of Steam
I've been having problems with Steam all day. I can browse the store, but clicking into the library screen causes Steam to close down and restart. From what I can see reading around, it seems to be an issue for people with Steam libraries larger than 2,000 games. A few people have been able to cause the issue by adding enough free games to go over the 2k threshold. So I can now buy new games from the store, but I can't actually play them unless I use the library's Small Mode. Using Small Mode means I can't access the store.

I guess this means my backlog will actually start getting looked at now!
 

AccidentalDenz

Lord of Steam
I've managed to fix the error. Me having more than 2,000 games in my library isn't actually the issue. I've created a number of shelves and one of those had all the Steam games I own that have achievements, which was over 2,000 games - deleting that fixed the issue!
 

AccidentalDenz

Lord of Steam
Have you completed it yet?
Not yet. I go through phases of jumping game to game and then actually trying to prioritise finishing certain ones. So far, I've only installed RoboCop as I'm hoping to get started on that in the next week or two, with the aim of finishing it this month. It should be doable as people are averaging around 17 hours to fully complete the game as per https://howlongtobeat.com/game/110262.

Capture.JPG
 

SiAdams

Well-known member
Not yet. I go through phases of jumping game to game and then actually trying to prioritise finishing certain ones. So far, I've only installed RoboCop as I'm hoping to get started on that in the next week or two, with the aim of finishing it this month. It should be doable as people are averaging around 17 hours to fully complete the game as per https://howlongtobeat.com/game/110262.

View attachment 40425
Can't wait man! Let's see who completes it in the shortest time! I would say first one to complete, but with work it's impossible to have decent spells on games these days :( I'll create a thread in a few weeks to show my progress :p
 

AccidentalDenz

Lord of Steam
Can't wait man! Let's see who completes it in the shortest time! I would say first one to complete, but with work it's impossible to have decent spells on games these days :( I'll create a thread in a few weeks to show my progress :p
I've had a bit of a play around with it this morning. The game automatically loaded up my demo save, which I thought was interesting.
 

AccidentalDenz

Lord of Steam
The problem has started happening again. Whenever I try and access the Steam library, Steam freezes and tries to log back in again only for the library page to freeze and go through this seemingly endless loop. That along with Steam regularly taking up 4+ GB of memory is proving frustrating. Even when I leave Steam on a different non-library page, it interrupts games every so often with this loop - notably when I get a new achievement.

I guess trawling through fixes for this is going to be my Sunday!
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
The problem has started happening again. Whenever I try and access the Steam library, Steam freezes and tries to log back in again only for the library page to freeze and go through this seemingly endless loop. That along with Steam regularly taking up 4+ GB of memory is proving frustrating. Even when I leave Steam on a different non-library page, it interrupts games every so often with this loop - notably when I get a new achievement.

I guess trawling through fixes for this is going to be my Sunday!
There are some known programs that cause compatibility issues with Steam, may be related


And try putting Steam into offline mode by adding the following lines to the Steam.cfg file (open it in notepad), it should be in the same location as the Steam.exe program, if it's not there create a file in the same folder as the steam executable named "steam.cfg" with the following contents:

BootStrapperInhibitAll=enable
ForceOfflineMode=enable

That should force Steam to open in offline mode and prevent it looking for updates at boot, see if that opens successfully or not?
 
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AccidentalDenz

Lord of Steam
There are some known programs that cause compatibility issues with Steam, may be related


And try putting Steam into offline mode by adding the following lines to the Steam.cfg file (open it in notepad), it should be in the same location as the Steam.exe program, if it's not there create a file in the same folder as the steam executable named "steam.cfg" with the following contents:

BootStrapperInhibitAll=enable
ForceOfflineMode=enable

That should force Steam to open in offline mode, see if that opens successfully or not?
I tried those steps and many more besides when I had this problem the other day. Retried but with no success. I do have some good news and bad news though.

The issue is seemingly caused by corruption in the installed games in the Steam library and some have been able to fix it by reinstalling Steam over their existing installation. I have not been that lucky and so have had to take the nuclear option of uninstalling everything and deleting all the Steam folders to start again from scratch.

Steam is now taking up between 500Mb and 1GB of memory which is far more like it compared to the 4GB and more it had been allocating itself. I can also access my library normally again, so problem solved.

I didn't think to screenshot my desktop to make a note of all the games before I nuked Steam - I got a bit carried away and had in the region of 200 installed games which was organised into how I was going to play them going forward.

On a major positive note though, I now have more than 1.5 TB of space on my gaming drive, so I can start again and won't install the games that I got bored of but didn't want to uninstall last time. Will allow me to push my backlog in a different direction and hopefully go back to trying to finish maybe 3 to 5 games a month which I've not done consistently in a while.

I'd already deleted all the collections in case it was an extension of the last issue that others were having, so the 800 or so "Play Next" games list is gone, which means I can begin creating a new one!
 

HomerJ

Prolific Poster
The issue is seemingly caused by corruption in the installed games in the Steam library and some have been able to fix it by reinstalling Steam over their existing installation. I have not been that lucky and so have had to take the nuclear option of uninstalling everything and deleting all the Steam folders to start again from scratch.

damn that must have been annoying
 

AccidentalDenz

Lord of Steam
damn that must have been annoying
It is annoying, but as I said later in that post, this gives me the chance to tackle my backlog (or at least begin to try!) from a different angle.

I've currently got a pile games queued to download on Steam over the next day or two - the total download is like 1TB. Our home internet is pants and Steam will gobble up all the bandwith given half a chance, so I've let Steam do its thing for a couple of hours this morning and I'm going to throttle Steam downloads while I'm working from home today and will need more bandwith than Steam will give me. I can then lift the cap for a few hours this evening and rinse and repeat over the next couple of days until I've downloaded all the things.

On a side note, I've been busy this wekend with some offline stuff, so I'll do that prize wheel in the couple of days.
 

HomerJ

Prolific Poster
I've currently got a pile games queued to download on Steam over the next day or two - the total download is like 1TB.

thats quite a lot but at last everything can be re downloaded, one advantage with digital downloads

On a side note, I've been busy this wekend with some offline stuff, so I'll do that prize wheel in the couple of days.

homer will always wait for a wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel
:LOL:
 
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