Steam window does not appear when its cache is on an exFAT RAM disk
2 posts
Hello,
After a recent OS (Win 11 26H2, build 26300.9974) or Steam client update, relocating the cache for Steam to an exFAT RAMdisk folder stopped working. The Steam GUI doesn't show, and files in the Cache_Data subfolder are not created during launch. Disabling relocation causes the Steam client to behave normally.
Please investigate this behavior if you have some spare time.
Best regards,
Konrad J.
We've reproduced it, and it is the Steam client rather than the relocation. When its cache is on an exFAT drive, steamwebhelper.exe crashes inside Steam's embedded browser and restarts every few seconds, so the window never appears. It does the same with exFAT on a plain virtual disk, without RAM Disk or Cache Relocator involved.
The reason is that exFAT has no file permissions. Steam's browser asks for the permissions of the Cache_Data folder, gets "not supported" back from the file system and crashes instead of handling it.
The same relocation to an NTFS drive works fine, so format the RAM disk as NTFS and relocate the Steam cache there again. A RAM File System volume works too.