I need some troubleshooting help with Steam

[Branjoman]

Hello folks, recently I bought myself a new laptop (Alienware 15, SO much better than my old Acer...), and it came preinstalled with Steam, all nice and dandy. But I've noticed recently that whenever I try to open Steam, the computer mulls the command for a while, and promptly forgets about opening Steam. So one evening, I had some time on my hands and decided to try and troubleshoot this odd issue - and it has me downright stumped.

I first monitored Steam through the task manager, which confirmed my previous assumptions - the Steam.exe application gets running, idles for around 10-20 seconds, and vanishes from the processes tab. I try to open it as an administrator, no luck. I check on Avast t o see if it is blocking it in some way, set up some exclusions, and nothing. Try to restart the computer to see if that helps - nope. So at this point, I decide to reinstall it, which is where my journey goes very sour. I uninstall it - even though half of the files are still there, including the Steam.exe! - and try to reinstall. The installation wizard thinks for a second and says 'Close Steam to continue installation'. Weird . so I look in the task manager, processes tab says nothing, but in the details tab a little ways over, lo and behold, there is the Steam.exe and some SteamWebHelper program happily chugging along. So I try to end the process - "Access is denied" - WHAT! . Now I am truly confused because there is no discernible way to shut down Steam, because it isn't open at a glance, but it is ticking over under the hood. So I'm left with a half cobbled Steam, with no way to shut it down or repair it, and I can't use it or any games on it at all (Thank GOD I don't use KSP on Steam, could you imagine!)

Having scratched my head for a little while, I decided to call for help from some of the smartest people I know - you guys. Any thoughts?]

P.S. Sorry for the wall of text, I wanted to explain my situation though thoroughly in case it helped in any way 

[*Aqua*]

Restart your laptop in safe mode and then try to uninstall Steam again or simply delete the folder. Then reboot to normal mode and install Steam.

If you still can't delete the files, try one of the numberous process killer programs from the interwebs. Also make sure Steam isn't autostarted on boot.

[Sanic]

Mods? @sal_vager or @Red Iron Crown?

I think this needs to be moved to the appropriate subforum.

[sal_vager]

Moved to the lounge, Steam is Valves software, not Squads, so unless someone here has run into this you're better off asking Steam support.

[Slam_Jones]

If it were me, I'd attempt to re-install Steam.

Not sure what to do if that doesn't work.

[Guest]

yes, the safe mode thing is a good idea. That should shut down all unnecessary processes and allow you to uninstall steam. It sounds like something is keeping a file open, denying the uninstaller access.