Steam.exe shows in Task Manager but not in Process Lasso process list

[Carnaxus]

Hey there everyone. I just came back from dinner, woke up my computer, and found that Steam was completely frozen. Decided to close it via Task Manager; all the windows closed, as did the secondary processes (SteamService.exe, steamwebhost.exe), but the main Steam.exe process remained in the list and any further attempts to interact with it have been met with an "Access Denied" popup.

I have Process Lasso, primarily because The Division kept starting up using only one of my eight cores (a whole other issue that doesn't belong here). I checked the process list there and Steam.exe does not show. Steam refuses to restart, probably because it checks whatever list Task Manager is using and sees that there's already a Steam.exe running. Does anyone have any suggestions? I know that restarting the computer will most likely fix this; I'm just wondering if anyone knows what the underlying cause might be.

Running Windows 10, fully up to date.

 

[Colif]

See if this helps - its an answer to almost your exact question: http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/864970667873998212/

 

[Carnaxus]

That seems to be directed more towards stopping Steam from crashing. I'm wondering what caused it to show up in one process list but not in the other.

Restarting did fix the immediate issue.

 

[Colif]

I am not sure, it might be that steam was showing as inactive and therefore not actually running at time. Tasks get suspended all the time so may show in task manager but not be actively doing anything. That is just a guess

Download Process explorer and run it as admin (it comes from Microsoft so its safe)

This page shows what all the colours and headings mean, link at bottom of it shows how to use it to find problems. You can right click processes and run an av scan from within the program.

run it if it ever happens again (or you can set it to replace task manager), it shows way more info than the regular task manager. I use it mostly for finding memory problems but it may reveal why it shows in task manager and not process lasso. How much access do you give process lasso? does it have admin access?

 

[Carnaxus]

I wasn't running it as admin at the time, but next time this happens I'll restart Lasso as admin. I tried Explorer and another one, called Process Hacker, and they both saw the Steam.exe but were unable to interact with it. I also tried using taskkill via command line, but was told "There is no instance of this process running."

 

[Colif]

process hacker and process explorer seem to look exactly the same in a lot of screens, I wonder who was first... one hosted by Microsoft might have got there 1st I think.