Most Steam games freeze on launch

[fromy96]

Hey everyone. I would appreciate any help I can get on this matter which is about to drive me crazy.

The problem is 90% of steam games freeze or crash on launch. Some will freeze during the splash screen, others in the main menu after pressing a key to continue. This is a PC I built a few months ago which worked perfectly until games started freezing a few weeks ago. The problem started suddenly and they day before Windows installed some updates, so 'm pretty sure that's the cause. I'm using W11.

I've reinstalled Windows a couple of times with no effect. All graphics drivers are up to date. BIOS is up to date. I currently have a fresh Windows install with nothing but Steam, a few games and drivers (no other external software whatsoever), and games still freeze.

Examples of games freezing on launch are Fallout 4, Rome TW2 and Mass Effect Legendary Edition. A couple of games that will run with no issues are FTL and Stardew Valley. Shogun 2 TW, which gives an option of which version of directx to use on launch, will run with dx9 but not with dx11. This is the only pointer as to where the problem may be, but I don't know what next steps to take...

Any help troubleshooting I can get is very appreciated.

[liravell]

Hi! Honestly, I have no idea if this will help but I had a similar issue in which half of my games would not launch in the last few weeks. I tried compatibility mode and running as admin - did not help. I managed to finally get it working today by uninstalling Steam and all games, going to Registry Editor, and deleting all keys related to Steam and games. (They will be spread across multiple folders often under production company names). Then I reinstalled and they launched just fine! Obviously watch out for what you're deleting but they'll just get reinstalled once you download everything again so no panic there. I'll keep my fingers crossed, maybe this will help!

[fromy96]

Originally posted by liravell:

Hi! Honestly, I have no idea if this will help but I had a similar issue in which half of my games would not launch in the last few weeks. I tried compatibility mode and running as admin - did not help. I managed to finally get it working today by uninstalling Steam and all games, going to Registry Editor, and deleting all keys related to Steam and games. (They will be spread across multiple folders often under production company names). Then I reinstalled and they launched just fine! Obviously watch out for what you're deleting but they'll just get reinstalled once you download everything again so no panic there. I'll keep my fingers crossed, maybe this will help!

Hey there. Thank you for your comment. I uninstalled everything and deleted all registry keys (using Revo uninstaller and manual search) but the issue remains :(

[RPG Gamer Man]

Could you post your pc info on here? More info will help you. You can do this on steam by clicking on help, then System info, and copy that info. Then paste it here.

[fromy96]

Originally posted by RPG Gamer Man:

Could you post your pc info on here? More info will help you. You can do this on steam by clicking on help, then System info, and copy that info. Then paste it here.

Sure thing, here you go:

Computer Information:

Manufacturer: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd.
Model: MS-7D77
Form Factor: Desktop
No Touch Input Detected
Processor Information:
CPU Vendor: AuthenticAMD
CPU Brand: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 8-Core Processor
CPU Family: 0x19
CPU Model: 0x61
CPU Stepping: 0x2
CPU Type: 0x0
Speed: 4200 MHz
16 logical processors
8 physical processors
Hyper-threading: Supported
FCMOV: Supported
SSE2: Supported
SSE3: Supported
SSSE3: Supported
SSE4a: Supported
SSE41: Supported
SSE42: Supported
AES: Supported
AVX: Supported
AVX2: Supported
AVX512F: Supported
AVX512PF: Unsupported
AVX512ER: Unsupported
AVX512CD: Supported
AVX512VNNI: Supported
SHA: Supported
CMPXCHG16B: Supported
LAHF/SAHF: Supported
PrefetchW: Unsupported

Operating System Version:
Windows 11 (64 bit)
NTFS: Supported
Crypto Provider Codes: Supported 311 0x0 0x0 0x0

Video Card:
Driver: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
DirectX Driver Name: amdxn32.dll
Driver Version: 31.0.24031.5001
DirectX Driver Version: 31.0.24031.5001
Driver Date: 4 17 2024
OpenGL Version: 4.6
Desktop Color Depth: 32 bits per pixel
Monitor Refresh Rate: 144 Hz
DirectX Card: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
VendorID: 0x1002
DeviceID: 0x744c
Revision: 0xc8
Number of Monitors: 1
Number of Logical Video Cards: 1
No SLI or Crossfire Detected
Primary Display Resolution: 2560 x 1440
Desktop Resolution: 2560 x 1440
Primary Display Size: 23.50" x 13.23" (26.97" diag), 59.7cm x 33.6cm (68.5cm diag)
Primary Bus Type Not Detected
Primary VRAM Not Detected
Supported MSAA Modes: 2x 4x 8x

Sound card:
Audio device: Speakers (Realtek(R) Audio)

Memory:
RAM: 31936 Mb

VR Hardware:
VR Headset: None detected

Miscellaneous:
UI Language: English
Media Type: Undetermined
Total Hard Disk Space Available: 952989 MB
Largest Free Hard Disk Block: 833497 MB
OS Install Date: May 07 2024
Game Controller: None detected
MAC Address hash: 5db754d6fc202cbe36e4316c8df9a2ade9260fab

Storage:
Disk serial number hash: 6df89c03
Number of SSDs: 1
SSD sizes: 1000G
Number of HDDs: 0
Number of removable drives: 0

Is there anything in particular you're looking for?

[Ben Lubar]

I don't know about the specific games you listed, but a lot of games do some pretty heavy processing at startup to avoid having to do that processing later on in a loading screen.

Examples I've seen are Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling, Risk of Rain 2, Parkitect, and The Wandering Village, all of which are Unity games that load a lot of data before they show the main menu to avoid having to display an extended loading screen during gameplay.

The idea is that the amount of time you spend starting the game up is much less than the amount of time you spend playing the game, so it's better to load the data when you start the game up than to risk stuttering during gameplay.

When a game isn't responding, sometimes Windows will decide that you trying to interact with the program in any way is you trying to close the program and "helpfully" close the program without asking for permission. The game isn't actually crashing in this case, it's just being closed by Windows.

[fromy96]

Originally posted by Ben Lubar:

I don't know about the specific games you listed, but a lot of games do some pretty heavy processing at startup to avoid having to do that processing later on in a loading screen.

Examples I've seen are Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling, Risk of Rain 2, Parkitect, and The Wandering Village, all of which are Unity games that load a lot of data before they show the main menu to avoid having to display an extended loading screen during gameplay.

The idea is that the amount of time you spend starting the game up is much less than the amount of time you spend playing the game, so it's better to load the data when you start the game up than to risk stuttering during gameplay.

When a game isn't responding, sometimes Windows will decide that you trying to interact with the program in any way is you trying to close the program and "helpfully" close the program without asking for permission. The game isn't actually crashing in this case, it's just being closed by Windows.

I see what you mean, but I don't think this is the case here. All games worked perfectly a few weeks ago. Some of those not working now don't even do any heavy processing at startup.

[Cmd-Worf]

Hello guys. I had the same Problem. After deactivation of my antivirus program it worked again. It seems that this has somethin to do with this.

[fromy96]

Hey everyone. I've done some more troubleshooting. It seems the problem is more serious than I thought. I have started noticing how some programs such as AMD adrenalin, not games only wouldn't launch. I also tried some games from the Epic launcher which didn't launch either. The task manager started freezing as well after killing stuck programs. USBs would not be detected 50% of the time. Windows defender would inly show a blank window. I decided to reinstall Windows 11 yet again, this time from the media creation tool and not with the built-in option which you can find under Windows Update.

Fully reinstalling Windows 11 from the media creation tool (with complete drive formating included) did not fix anything. I decided to install Windows 10 again from a media creation tool. During installation, I got an error message (0x8007025D) and the installation was aborted.

After some investigating, I understand there's something wrong with the USB I'm using (unlikely) or I could have bad sectors in the drive. It seems it could also be bad RAM. I'll have to see if I can find the exact culprit, but this is no longer a Steam issue.

[Potatoes062]

Having the exact same issue as you with nearly the same cards and specs. Did you ever figure it out? @fromy96 I've wiped SSD, reflashed BIOS, reset CMOS, reinstalled W11 from media creation tool, installed all relevant drivers. Was shocked when it was all done that I still couldn't load my games. Age of empires and age of mythology specifically.

Anyways let me know if you fixed the issue.