Steam freezes entire computer shortly after opening

[pizzownd]

Hi, I've been having this problem since Friday, December 15th. Whenever I open the steam client, or try to launch a game which causes the steam client to open, my computer continues to respond for the next minute or so, and then my entire computer freezes and I have to manually use the restart button. Ctrl+Alt+Delete does not work at this point. It's entirely frozen.

Only the steam client is causing me this problem. I've tested various other programs on my computer, as well as other games through Origin, etc, and my computer ONLY freezes specifically about a minute after Steam is launched.

I've tried uninstalling and re-installing Steam, and I've tried several other things this past weekend from internet research. Nothing is working. Steam is always freezing my computer. I suspect this has to do with a recent Steam update or Windows 10 update.

I've never ever had this problem in my entire life before.

Please help.

[Chainsawdaz]

Hey, I have the same problem, tried doing a lot of things and nothing solved it, I've even reinstalled windows so all I have is windows 10 and steam installed and still just after opening steam is freezes my computer or blue screens it

[pizzownd]

How long has the problem been happening for you?

It's bizarre. I can go run Battlefield 1 on ultra settings, getting close to 60 fps while I have Spotify on in the background.

Then I can close these programs. Go try to open the Steam Client...login....wait about a minute. Boom. Computer completely frozen.

Starting to realize this is not easy to fix :(

[Chainsawdaz]

Honestly only today I've noticed it, I haven't played any games in like 3 months had a half-day at work today and now 2 weeks off so I thought great let's play some games, kinda miss console now where everything was so much smoother just turn on and 30 seconds later you're online in a game no crashes.

Do you by any chance have 2 monitors? I have 2 and maybe it's causing some issues?

[pizzownd]

I have an Xbox when I need it but I'll become OCD if something like Steam isn't working until it's fixed.

I do have two monitors, but have no idea why that would have anything to do with it. Let me know if you try with one monitor and it magically works lol.

I opened a ticket with Steam Support last night. Maybe they will have an idea.

Do you know what version of Steam and Windows you have?
For example, my Windows 10 Pro is version 1703..

If you open Steam and click Help on the top left then About, what information does it show you? (assuming you can do this before it freezes. I was able to take a quick screen shot before mine froze)
My Steam Built date is Dec 15, 2017, Steam API: v107, and Steam Package versions 1513371133

[Chainsawdaz]

Have you had any good news in almost 2 days? Sorry about taking a long time to respond I just gave up with games.

I just tried it with 1 monitor, made no difference, I can't get into steam long enough to catch the version but my windows version is windows 10 home 1709. I have the latest nvidia driver 388.59.

[pizzownd]

Bro! I think I'm fixed now. I think I had the same nvidia driver as you, but they just came out with a new driver today. It seems to have fixed it. This is the longest I've gone without a freeze since it started happening.

Try updating to the new Nvidia driver!!!!! It's 388.71

[pizzownd]

Never mind. It eventually did end up freezing again :(

[mattBot]

same thing is happening to me, no solutions yet. you can check out my thread on tomshardware and see if any of these help.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3594926/steam-freezes-windows-update-version-1709.html

[pizzownd]

Mine seems to be fixed again after manually installing motherboard drivers and installing the Fall update for Windows 10. Not sure which out of those two fixed it.

[❤DeeDee da Skunkbunneh]

I have been having the exact same issue since about the 21st of December and Steam support has been less than helpful. They are claiming I must be having hardware or OS failure. This does not explain why Steam is the only program locking up my PC. I have done extensive troubleshooting including running memtest in case my RAM or CPU memory was failing and they come up clean. The problems began after the 1703 windows 10 update and still continues with 1709. Rolling back the updates did not seem to fix the problem. All my drivers are up to date and I set exclusions on virus and malware software in case they were to blame. I am also on the latest nVidia driver 388.71. I am looking at spending $900 to rebuild my PC if this can't be resolved and I really can't afford to do it for a while. I rather not go this route in case Microsoft is really to blame.

[pizzownd]

Do you by any chance have an asus suite service running? Disabling this task also might have helped me and someone else.

[❤DeeDee da Skunkbunneh]

I uninstalled AI Suite and Steam has started once so far without issue. I only used it for CPU temp monitoring and BIOS installs. Strange if that was the problem as it has never caused issue before unless the Windows updates made it incompatible or broke it in someway. I also ran a Windows update troubleshooter to check for a bad install or if any critical updates are failing to be installed at all and it did find a couple files that needed installing. I can't be sure which one fixed it. Since Steam sometimes did not crash, this isn't conclusive but certainly a good sign. I'll give it a couple days to see if it remains fixed. Thanks for the suggestion kitty raptor!

[Lord Squidward]

I had that problem too, it was happenings because of the steam games&mods updates I noticed that because when steam was off my HDD usage was like 10% and after turning steam on it got up to 100% and didnt go down till it crashes itselfs, so I decided to try in offline mode, and guess what, any crashes. I fixed it doing the next ->
1.Turning off my internet connection so I can join steam in offline mode.
2.Cancelled all the games&mods updates
Thats worked for me.
My problem was ARK at that moment. I know that it was downloading mods i had 332 mods to be installed, and it slowly started to install, it was downloading something but didnt show what exactly :
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/401441965964656657/402554858743267339/unknown.png
Cancelling the update totally fixed my problem. (I went to off mode to cancel all updates manually to avoid crashes and freeze)

[❤DeeDee da Skunkbunneh]

Update....Steam is still stable after serveral days so AI suite and Windows 10 were to blame.

[Sirius]

same problem, been crashing my comp a lot lately