protonscr

Steam spawns `explorer.exe` process that hogs CPU

steamopen ProtonDistro Family: NixOS
ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#11775 · opened 2025-02-22 by fpf3 · updated 2026-05-01 · 3 comments · github
Ffpf3 2025-02-22 github

Your system information

  • Steam client version (build number or date): 1738026274
  • Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): NixOS
  • Opted into Steam client beta?: Yes
  • Have you checked for system updates?: Yes
  • Steam Logs:

steam_logs.tar.gz

  • GPU: NVidia

Description

After leaving Steam open for a while, I notice my case fans spinning up a lot more aggressively than usual.

Look in htop, and there is a Windows explorer process that's eating a core.

I had left open the library page for Caves of Qud, and the "Friends" window.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

  1. Leave steam running for a while (maybe a day? maybe two?)

I'm curious as to why Steam needs to open explorer at all, as killing the process seems to have no effect on Steam.

I'm also curious as to why explorer is being such a CPU hog in this instance. It looks like previously there was an issue where Steam would basically make a fork bomb of explorer.exe processes, but I'm only seeing a single process, so I think this is different.

Kkisak-valve maintainer 2025-02-22 github

Hello @fpf3, similar to the older issue report, can you tell what Proton version is being run when this happens and do you have third party builds of Proton installed?

Ffpf3 2025-02-22 github

@kisak-valve Thanks for the quick response. I'm not sure how this works, but I'm not playing any game when this happens, so there shouldn't be any proton running, right?

As to third party protons, I have GE 9.10 available to use.

Ffpf3 2026-05-01 github

Hi, this is still happening. I left Steam open for 18 hours and I came home from work to find a core had been saturated and my CPU had been running at 80 degrees all night and all day.