Steam Update Causing steamwebhelper Hang

[SteamOnTheScene]

Earlier this week Steam startup started failing with a dialogue complaining the steamwebhelper is not responding, and offering options to restart Steam or the helper in various ways, or to exit steam. Restarting never helps. I believe this issue is widespread and either has or will soon (with their next Steam autoupdate) impact all portingkit users who use steam.

1. The dialogue looks like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comme...esponding/
   
2. Note that a steam update was released on November 5th when this all started: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/...5692571024. A fully update steam outputs this version string if started from a wine command prompt within the port: "steam_client_win32 version 1730853027".
   
3. I've reproduced this personally using "1574 - Steambuild 32/64bit DXVK" on Intel Macs in a MacBookPro14,3 running Ventura and an iMac17,1 running Monterey, but it's a widespread problem impacting Apple Silicon machines running portingkit (https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comme...j4mh/help/) and machines running Whisky also (https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comme...heres_why/).
   
4. Whisky devs have a fix released: https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comme...t/lw73mmd/ in which they claim that the issue was caused by an update to the Chromium Embedded Framework (https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki..._Framework), which the Steam release-notes from (2) confirm at least occurred.
   
5. In comments (https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comme...t/lvt7kn8/), gcenx (who develops a bunch of widely used wine-on-mac tools) notes that a bunch of wine builds are capable of running the new Steam release including CrossOver-24.0.x, CrossOver-Preview, wine-stable, wine-devel, wine-staging. Unless I'm missing something, though, none of those are currently available as engines for portingkit. The latest I see is WS12WineCX64Bit23.7.1-1, which I believe is based on CrossOver-23.x. The latest non-crossover wine I see is WS11Wine64Bit9.3, which if I'm reading that right would be relatively ancient compared to the current Wine stable of 9.21. I could be confused on this versioning, but I think I'm reading it right.
   
6. If impacted individuals are willing to upgrade to a randomly downloaded binary from the internet archive, there's a workaround procedure to downgrade steam and prevent it from upgrading https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comme...ky_to_get/ which people are claiming gets them working again at least for now.
   

Is work to package CrossOver 24.x as an engine in portingkit likely to happen anytime soon, I think in the current state all Steam games are either broken or are about to be broken by the next Steam autoupdate. Alternatively, is there a path for a reasonably technically sophisticated end-user to add a new entry to the engine list?

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Was going to post a link to this thread in 1574 - Steambuild 32/64bit DXVK but it doesn't look like I have permissions to post there... maybe because I just registered?

[bongeaux]

I'm having the same problem on an Intel iMac running macOS 15.1 Sequoia. I'm having this same problem when I try to run Steam using Steambuild 32/64bit DVXK and Steambuild 32/64bit Direct3D.

As the poster says, it was working (very well!) until a recent Steam update. Also, props to OP -- that was an excellent bug report.

I'd love to see it working again ...

Thanks,

     Ben.

[tmtm]

Earlier this week Steam startup started failing with a dialogue complaining the steamwebhelper is not responding

1. .......
2. If impacted individuals are willing to upgrade to a randomly downloaded binary from the internet archive, there's a workaround procedure to downgrade steam and prevent it from upgrading https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comme...ky_to_get/ which people are claiming gets them working again at least for now.
   

....

Thanks. that link talks about "Whisky" (what is that?)

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"How to: Downgrade Steam inside of Whisky to get back to playing while they fix it.

Discussion
Lifted and rewritten for simplicity sake from: https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky/issues/1199 (where you should all be notifying the developers of the wonderful little free app you use about issues instead of adding new posts to this subreddit)

Open Whisky, right click on Steam and click Config.
in the "arguments" box paste this:
-forcesteamupdate -forcepackagedownload -overridepackageurl http://web.archive.org/web/20240520if_/m...com/client -exitsteam

3. click the back button at the top, then double click Steam. You'll see the familiar Steam Update bar. Let it do it's thing. Wait for it and then maybe wait another minute or so. Go make some taquitos. El Monterey only take 1:10 for 3, but make sure you wrap them in a paper towel so they dont get hard.

4. right click on Steam and click Config again. Remove everything from the arguments box, then copy and paste this in it:

-noverifyfiles -nobootstrapupdate -skipinitialbootstrap -norepairfiles -overridepackageurl

5. click back, and now you are free to double click and run Steam. Once the devs have released an update for Whisky, it might be important to go and remove those arguments so that Steam can continue to update.

That should get ya'll back into action. Hope it helps!"

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There is no "Config" inside of PortingKit and no "Arguments" box .... see screenshot .... I would appreciate your help. Thanks.

[SteamOnTheScene]

Thanks. that link talks about "Whisky" (what is that?)

Whisky is another tool for running Windows games on Mac: https://getwhisky.app/. It works only on Apple Silicon and quite recent MacOS versions I think, but is otherwise similar in a broad sense to portingkit.

The essence of the workaround is to downgrade steam by running some commands inside the wine environment and then afterward to configure wine to continue launching steam with some specific flags that prevent it from auto-updating so it doesn't break again. I haven't tried the workaround and I don't exactly recommend it since downloading random binaries off internet-archive is a bit sketchy, but it is possible to do equivalent things in portingkit via the wine command prompt for running commands and either properties -> target or the wineskin config for the flags. Since I haven't done this I can't really walk you through it, but if you're persistent it should be possible to adapt the Whisky workaround to work in portingkit.

But in addition to the sketchiness of a random download, it's likely to be a temporary fix that lasts only weeks or months. Eventually the old steam client is likely to stop working. What we need for a proper fix here is for the wine engines in portingkit to get updated, hopefully one of the admins/maintainers chimes in with news on that front.

[rowmeo]

Hi,

Incase it helps anyone I was able to adapt the advice given for whisky to get steam working again in porting kit (at least for now).

I was able to get it working by right clicking the game icon, going into properties changing the "target" to:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" -allosarches -cef-force-32bit -forcesteamupdate -forcepackagedownload -overridepackageurl http://web.archive.org/web/20240520if_/m...com/client

After the steam update completed I just modified the "target" again to:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" -allosarches -cef-force-32bit -noverifyfiles -nobootstrapupdate -skipinitialbootstrap -norepairfiles -overridepackageurl

If it doesnt work you might need to remove the game and put it back before following my above instructions but definitely try this first.

Note that because of the game I was using the options -allosarches and -cef-force-32bit were already there before I started so I kept them in place. I didn't use the -exitsteam option in the initial downgrade but I did wait a while after it completed before relaunching with the new options.


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Earlier this week Steam startup started failing with a dialogue complaining the steamwebhelper is not responding

1. .......
   
2. If impacted individuals are willing to upgrade to a randomly downloaded binary from the internet archive, there's a workaround procedure to downgrade steam and prevent it from upgrading https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comme...ky_to_get/ which people are claiming gets them working again at least for now.
   

....

Thanks. that link talks about "Whisky" (what is that?)

---

----------------------------------

"How to: Downgrade Steam inside of Whisky to get back to playing while they fix it.

Discussion
Lifted and rewritten for simplicity sake from: https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky/issues/1199 (where you should all be notifying the developers of the wonderful little free app you use about issues instead of adding new posts to this subreddit)

Open Whisky, right click on Steam and click Config.
in the "arguments" box paste this:
-forcesteamupdate -forcepackagedownload -overridepackageurl http://web.archive.org/web/20240520if_/m...com/client -exitsteam

3. click the back button at the top, then double click Steam. You'll see the familiar Steam Update bar. Let it do it's thing. Wait for it and then maybe wait another minute or so. Go make some taquitos. El Monterey only take 1:10 for 3, but make sure you wrap them in a paper towel so they dont get hard.

4. right click on Steam and click Config again. Remove everything from the arguments box, then copy and paste this in it:

-noverifyfiles -nobootstrapupdate -skipinitialbootstrap -norepairfiles -overridepackageurl

5. click back, and now you are free to double click and run Steam. Once the devs have released an update for Whisky, it might be important to go and remove those arguments so that Steam can continue to update.

That should get ya'll back into action. Hope it helps!"

----------------------------------

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There is no "Config" inside of PortingKit and no "Arguments" box .... see screenshot .... I would appreciate your help. Thanks.

[bongeaux]

The game I play in Steam using PortingKit (Team Fortress 2) has been upgraded to 64 bit. Someone indicated that removing the “-cef-force-32bit” gave them a substantial performance boost when playing that game. If your Steam app is able to run 64 bit, I think it’s definitely worth seeing if it still works rather than forcing it back to 32 bit. If it doesn’t work just reinstate that flag.

[tmtm]

Thanks to all of you! I first did what rowmeo said and nothing happens, then did what bongeaux said and steam opened faster than before (looked a bit different too) and I managed to play games again!

[bongeaux]

I blew away my Steambuild 32/64bit Direct3D installation and reinstalled. After doing that, Steam was able to run again and I've downloaded my games and they work again. Hurrah!

I have a suspicion that there was a bad version of Steam that was causing the problem which has since been fixed. The version that had been installed wasn't able to boot to the point where it could update so it was stuck.

[SteamOnTheScene]

I blew away my Steambuild 32/64bit Direct3D installation and reinstalled. After doing that, Steam was able to run again and I've downloaded my games and they work again. Hurrah!

I have a suspicion that there was a bad version of Steam that was causing the problem which has since been fixed. The version that had been installed wasn't able to boot to the point where it could update so it was stuck.

I just tried this for the DXVK build and it seems to work for me as well. Interestingly, the build number I end up with in Help -> About Steam is 1716242052, a lower build number than the broken one... and a build date of May 20 is shown... also older than the November build that broke things (and older than the November build running on my WIndows 10 system right now). I don't think Steam have released a NEWER client that fixes compatibility with Crossover 23.x wine engines like the ones available in Portingkit currently.

I wonder if they have some kind of OS fingerprinting in their downloader that recognizes it's running in an old Wine, automatically blacklists the newer broken build, and downloads the older working build instead? Hopefully they do and this doesn't try to autoupdate to the November build and break again. I think we should all still be quite interested in a Crossover 24.x wine engine for Portingkit, as I suspect we're still stranded on an old build and can't run the latest Chromium Embedded Framework in current Steam client releases. But if steam made it easy to downgrade just by reinstalling that's a pretty nice step forward for now.

[bongeaux]

I have the same version number and date in my new installation. When I ask steam to check for client updates, it says that "something went wrong while checking for a Steam Client update". I can't find any logs where the reason for the error might be explained. Does anyone know where to look?