Remove Steam completely - that's how it works
In this practical tip, we show you how to completely remove Steam in individual steps.
Remove Steam in the Control Panel completely
Note: Uninstalling Steam will also delete your games. To prevent this, you can go to the Steam program folder beforehand (usually C: \ Program Files (x86) \ Steam) and copy the "steamapps" folder to another location on your computer.
- Steam can be uninstalled via the "Control Panel" in "Programs & Features".
- Mark the program "Steam" and click on "Uninstall". Follow the uninstall instructions.
- If this does not work for you, a steam process is still running on your PC in the background. Use the key combination [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Del] to switch to "Task Manager".
- End ongoing steam processes.
- Then try to uninstall Steam again.
Uninstall Steam manually from the system
If the automatic uninstallation does not work, you can also remove Steam from the system manually:
- Close all processes from Steam.
- Navigate to the Steam program folder (usually C: \ Program Files (x86) \ Steam) and delete all the data in it. If you want to save your games beforehand, copy the "steamapps" folder to another location.
- Click the "Windows" button and search for "regedit". The registry editor then appears.
- On 32-bit systems, go to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Valve \".
- Right-click to select the "Valve" folder and press "Delete".
- With a 64-bit system, navigate to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Wow6432Node \ Valve \" and right-click to remove the "Valve" folder.
- Now remove the "Steam" folder under "HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Valve \ Steam" and close the registration editor.
In the next practical tip, read what you can do when Steam is down.