Although Steam is the largest online game store, it is not without its issues. There are many moving parts, such as the Steam client files, game files, networking and system compatibility, that all need to work seamlessly in order for you to enjoy your Steam games. It is not uncommon for one of these things to throw a spanner in the works and prevent the Steam client and games from opening. However, all of these issues are fixable.

Since there are multiple reasons why Steam refuses to run, it’s not so easy to diagnose exactly what went wrong. Therefore, we recommend going through the following solutions one by one and seeing if they resolve the issue.

One of the first things you should do is give the Steam client administrative rights when it runs. Here’s how to do it:

If the Steam client didn’t close properly the last time you used it, it could still be running in the background and preventing you from opening it again. Here’s how to fix this: