UnrealEditor Stuck as Background Process

Development Getting Started & Setup
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1

If I close Unreal Engine, UnrealEditor still remains as a process in Task Manager. If I open and close Unreal Engine three times, there will be three UnrealEditor processes in Task Manager.

I use:

  • Unreal Engine 5.1.1
  • Windows 11 Home
  • NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU

I have to manually end UnrealEditor processes in Task Manager. Is there a way to fix this?

2

Hey @gotanidea!

Are opening and closing UE in rapid succession? Is there a specific reason why you would need to do that? Would you mind taking a screenshot of the process in the task manager?

3

Hi @Quetzalcodename , I don’t always work with Unreal, so I shut it down sometimes. After getting some random crashes on Unreal startup, I found multiple UnrealEditors in Task Manager:

UnrealEditors as Background Processes

4

Hey @gotanidea,

That is definitely odd. Though crashes may definitely lead to the editor not closing down properly, as that has also happened to me and is usually the “crashreportclienteditor” not completing and keeping the engine open. I am inclined to think your issues were caused by the crashes and not because the engine was not closing at all.

Are you still getting crashes? Does this happen if you open and close the editor manually and checking if the process is still open?

5

I still get random crashes, but it happens less often after I end the UnrealEditor background processes. Yesterday I found that UnrealEditor will only get stuck if I close a project. It doesn’t happen to other projects, so it is okay. Thanks

6

I had this same problem, but figured out the issue in my case.
I am not sure whether this is relevant in your case, but thought I would share for others looking for answers.

I figured out the issue by running the debug editor, so debugging your process might narrow it down.

My issue was this:

void UStreamableManagerSubsystem::Deinitialize()
{
	Deinitialize();
}

I forgot to put Super:: before Deinitialize(), so it was stuck in an infinite loop and unable to shut down.

void UStreamableManagerSubsystem::Deinitialize()
{
	Super::Deinitialize();
}

So to anyone experiencing this issue, I suggest running a process with debugging, once you exit the Editor there’s a good chance the debugger will point to some issue.

7

This is still an issue in 5.4. It can remain busy for over 10 minutes, with hardly any CPU usage but mainly disk access - of the pagefile(s). My guess is that is garbage collection - either C++ or Python or a question of memory leak(s). If you start unreal within that period, it has the potential to cause the PC to stall. A hard reset (power cycle, reset button) is the only way out in that case.
In case of memory leaks, this should be addressed as a bug. Garbage collection should be avoided as much as possible. Better clean programming so there is no or as less as possible garbage to collect.

8

I do have the same problem. No idea what triggered it, all I know is that since installing 5.5.1 the editor appears as background process only. Re-installing, rebooting, nothing helps.

Task manager looks the same as depicted in the post above; however, lauching the editor not only launches UnrealEditor in the background; in Task Manager also a process “Hub for UE5 runtime traces (…) and tools like Unreal Insights” appears.

Any ideas?

9

Hi all. It appears I found the reason for the issue, albeit I do not understand it: I had a USB thumb drive attached to the machine.

For some crazy reason, removing the USB drive resolved the problem.

Thank you!