Steam Forum

Hi,

On Crossover 19.0.1.

When launching Fallout New Vegas, I get 3 windows with the same message, "The program steamwebhelper.exe has encountered a serious problem and needs to close. ..."

The game still attempts to launch, but it appears that steamwebhelper.exe is jamming something up. After a first 20 seconds or so of the game appearing normal, the screen goes black, and my mouse gets stuck in the bottom left corner of the window. I can still hear the sound from the game playing, but I can't see anything and I have no control.

I have successfully played this game, several times. This problem came up last week and since then the game is unplayable.

Any ideas on how to get steamwebhelper.exe to stop crashing, or failing that, to disable it entirely?

Thanks!

Currently, every time Steam updates, it is breaking the bottle in CrossOver, and the broken behavior sounds exactly like what you are describing. The only way that I am aware of to fix this issue currently is to install Steam into a new bottle. You can then copy your game files into the new bottle (pcgamingwiki is a great source for game file locations). The location of CrossOver bottles will be based on whether you are using CrossOver on Mac or Linux.

I hope this helps and perhaps saves you a bit of pain!

Thanks, I will give that a try and report back on the results.

Installing Steam into a new bottle and then reinstalling Fallout NV into that bottle resolved the issue. It is a bit of a time-consuming hassle to have to do all that. Fortunately I was running Fallout Mod Manager out of a different bottle to begin with, and all of my game saves are outside of the Crossover structure, so those were relatively unaffected (though I obviously had to change the path to the Fallout NV directory for FOMM to know where to look for it).

Interestingly, I am running Fallout 3 in a different bottle, and it has not run into this issue at all.

As of 2/13, problem has reappeared. The solution didn't even last one month. I guess this was yet another Steam update. sigh
It would be really nice if there were a way to sidestep this issue. It's a big inconvenience to have to reinstall the game every few weeks.

I found a solution that seems to work. Unfortunately, it will not save your existing bottle, but there seems to be a pretty easy way to prevent the Steam client from auto-updating. I found it on this forum page (which has some other potential solutions that I did not try): https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/1639788130289877816/

The one I tried was adding a Steam.cfg file and putting BootStrapperInhibitAll=Enable inside.

I'm assuming that you are on Mac, so the location where this file should go is:
/Users/(your username)/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/Bottles/Steam-new-new-new-pre-update-4/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Steam

I just opened a Terminal, went to that location, and created a file that just contained:
BootStrapperInhibitAll=Enable

If you are unfamiliar with Terminal, there are other ways to do this too (just let me know :). I hope this helps you out, and hopefully it works :)

I have another solution that allows Steam to update and preserve existing bottle if this bug appear :)

1. Open bottle c: drive and move SteamApps folder to desktop.
2. Delete Steam folder.
3. Reinstall Steam into same bottle, login and update Steam
4. Move and replace Your original SteamAps folder with all installed games from desktop back to the bottle.

Cheers!

Stjepan Barbaric wrote:

I have another solution that allows Steam to update and preserve
existing bottle if this bug appear :)

1. Open bottle c: drive and move SteamApps folder to desktop.
2. Delete Steam folder.
3. Reinstall Steam into same bottle, login and update Steam
4. Move and replace Your original SteamAps folder with all installed
   games from desktop back to the bottle.

Cheers!

Trying this one out. I'll let you know how it works out. Thanks!

That worked. Relatively easy way to do it.

Benjamin Reece wrote:

That worked. Relatively easy way to do it.

Thanks.
This method works even for new bottles so you don't have to redownload already installed games.

Stjepan Barbaric wrote:

Benjamin Reece wrote:

That worked. Relatively easy way to do it.

Thanks.
This method works even for new bottles so you don't have to
redownload already installed games.

Great to know. Thanks again for your help. You saved me some trouble, for sure.

There is finally some good news here! The latest Steam Beta client includes a launch option that can be used to fix this issue :D

The following instructions should work for existing Steam bottles. However, I did find that it didn't work correctly for one old Steam bottle that I had -- if this happens, please try with a fresh Steam bottle and then you can use Stjepan's trick for moving your installed games over :) (Also, please let me know if the existing bottle update didn't work and you needed a new one -- this is useful information for us.)

1) Switch to the Steam Beta Client:

• Click on the Steam icon in the upper right hand corner of the dock (to the left of the time).
• Click on "Settings" to open Steam settings
• Under the "Account" tab, look for "Beta participation" and click "CHANGE" to opt in to the Steam Beta Update
• Steam will automatically prompt you to restart Steam -- Do this.

2) Close Steam completely.

3) Run Steam with the launch options: "-allosarches -cef-force-32bit"

• Right-click on the Steam icon in CrossOver
• Click "Run with Options..."
• add the following options to the Command Line Options box: -allosarches -cef-force-32bit
• Click "Run"

Currently, you will need to run Steam in this way (following Step 3) every single launch. If you do not use those launch options, it will still be broken. We are working on a solution embedded in CrossOver to automate this process, but this is the bleeding edge fix :)

Anna Lasky wrote:

There is finally some good news here! The latest Steam Beta client
includes a launch option that can be used to fix this issue :D

3) Run Steam with the launch options: "-allosarches
-cef-force-32bit"

Currently, you will need to run Steam in this way (following Step 3)
every single launch. If you do not use those launch options, it will
still be broken. We are working on a solution embedded in CrossOver
to automate this process, but this is the bleeding edge fix :)

Does not work for me running Macos 10.15.5 w/ bottle Windows 10.