Earlier today I was trying to reboot my computer to make sure I wouldn't receive some malware from the internet, and during reboot I made sure that my computer was not connected to the internet to be really safe. After dealing with this potential threat, while my computer wasn't connected to the internet there was a pop-up message from my (Win8) taskbar saying that Steam was trying and failing to connect to a network.
- Steam was not actively running. The app wasn't open.
- I don't like the fact that Steam was trying to connect to a network without my permission.
I very much don't like Steam connecting to something for an unknown reason. This could potentially be a large security breach. The only game I have on Steam is Terraria.
Knowing this could be a big security problem, I uninstalled Steam to avoid trouble until I could find a solution to this problem.
Does anybody have any idea why Steam needs to connect to the internet and do background tasks while it isn't supposed to run; and does anyone know how to make sure it never runs unless I manually launch the system?
I really need an answer soon because I would like to play Terraria, but I don't dare use Steam until I can make sure it isn't doing these strange and potentially dangerous tasks.
Best Answer
There are two options I see:
1) Ensure the "Run Steam when my computer starts" option is turned off in Steam's options dialog.
2) Run msconfig.exe (which I hope is available under Windows 8) to turn off Steam, or any other processes, that run upon startup.