Asked By
Wayne S Tam
35 points
N/A
Posted on - 01/16/2014
Hello there,
When I opened my MAC today and started the Steam I got this error which it says that another steam is opened. I have verified all the programs that are open and I didn’t find any other steam opened. I have rebooted the MAC and the error appeared again. Can anyone help me to start the steam on my MAC ?
Thanks !
Steam failed to load: *steamstartEngine(0xbfffe078) failed with error 1: A Steam Engine Instance already exists
OK
Steam failed to load 0xbfffe078 and error 1 occurred
This is probably caused by a module in the program that doesn’t stop properly and when you open Steam, the program thinks that it is already running because of the module that didn’t terminate. Try this method first. Open a terminal window and then run the following command:
This command will display all running programs that bear the word “Steam”. Often you will see two to three items. You should see something like in the list below.
-
712 ?? 700:23.42 /Applications/Steam.app/Contents/MacOS/osx32/steam -psn_0_40970
-
64849 ttys002 0:00.00 grep Steam
One of the items in the list will have “grep Steam” in it. When you see this just ignore it. Each of the items in the list starts with a number. Use the following command to terminate the programs:
Run this command on each of the items replacing the number with the item’s number. Remember not to kill the item I mentioned above that should be ignored. When you are done, close the terminal and try running Steam again. If this method didn’t work, close Steam and go to “Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Steam” and then delete all the files in the folder.
Next, run Steam.app either from the Applications folder or from the Dock. While the app is running, test the problem again. Additionally, this method should not affect all your installed games.
