Author Topic: Steam stuck as in-game Blockland  (Read 1240 times)

Before stating what my problem is, I should first explain what happens typically. When you start a Steam game, not only is the game started, but the Steam overlay is also started. The overlay is the thing that appears when you Shift + Tab. When the game is shut down, both the game and the overlay are killed.

Sometimes when the game is shut down, your Steam profile still says you're in game. This is caused because either the game or the overlay failed to shut down and is still running in the background. This can be a problem because it prevents you from starting any other games, including the game it says you're still playing. Fortuantely, this can be easily fixed by ending the process of whatever got stuck.

This is my issue:
Blockland has been doing this lately, and I can't do anything because both the game and the overlay are shut down properly. I searched high and low through my task manager and can't find a single goddamn process that could cause the issue.

So, my first question is:
Are there any other processes that start when running Blockland? If not, are there any Steam processes I'm not aware of? If not, are there any other possible reasons for this happening? Steam games getting stuck as in-game is irritating in so many different ways that there has to be a solution other than restarting Steam. I hate doing that. /discuss

Oh, and if anyone needs it

Steam does that to any game at random, pretty annoying. This fix I found from http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3042047 might work.

Quote
Close STEAM.
Navigate to /STEAM/
and delete all files except STEAM.EXE
and STEAMAPPS.

Start STEAM.exe, it will force a full reinstall and system check.

No promises if you'll lose anything or not. Since STEAMAPPS isn't getting deleted, your mods will probably still be there.

Also, this:

Quote
Reasons to my madness ( for everyone else who might find this topic using search)

The steam installer only downloads a core system, and then starts STEAM.
it is STEAM's job at that point to download everything else.
However, this installation of steam willl not download all new files and verify their integrity, thereby not ensuring that the system is up to date.
As well, the STEAM installer will not give you an error when it cannot reinstall or repair a file that is in memory.

By deleting all files except your games and the STEAM.executable, you not only see if a file is locked into memory ( so it wouldn't be effected by an install anyway)
it verify that all files that it downloads are up to date.

Steam does that to any game at random
I don't think it's random. I've seen it affect several people with the exact same game before.

I'll try what was suggested.

Okay, quick update. I tried what was suggested, and I stuff you not, I couldn't delete the Game Overlay files because they were apparently running.

What the actual forget.

I guess my next question is how can a software run but not show a process?

Steam does that to any game at random, pretty annoying. This fix I found from http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3042047 might work.

No promises if you'll lose anything or not. Since STEAMAPPS isn't getting deleted, your mods will probably still be there.
What in the forget? Just restart steam.

What in the forget? Just restart steam.
As stated in the OP, I hate restarting Steam. Besides, that didn't work.

As stated in the OP, I hate restarting Steam. Besides, that didn't work.
Quick correction: the solution that CSP provided didn't work.

As stated in the OP, I hate restarting Steam.
......deleting files in the steam folder and reinstalling steam 1. does include restarting steam and 2. is much more work.

I guess my next question is how can a software run but not show a process?

If you tried a complete reinstall on both Blockland and Steam, it might just be a problem with Steam's community servers. The whole website itself has a bad history of dropped connections, crashes, etc.

Sorry, OP. I'm a redneck druggie, not an IT monkey. Here's some money for your troubles.


......deleting files in the steam folder and reinstalling steam 1. does include restarting steam and 2. is much more work.
But if it did work, which it didn't, it would be a potentially permanent fix.

But if it did work, which it didn't, it would be a potentially permanent fix.
Until it breaks again.

Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC.
Click Processes.
Click Steam.exe (or Steam.exe *32).
Click "End Process".
Confirm that you would like to end the process.

Restart Steam.

Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC.
Click Processes.
Click Steam.exe (or Steam.exe *32).
Click "End Process".
Confirm that you would like to end the process.

Restart Steam.
This is to force Steam to close and to set your status to "Not in game".
Also, you might want to restart your computer.

Do NOT reinstall anything unless you are absolutely sure that it is a problem with file integrity.

i get this a lot, and i just open task manager and find the program, and close it.