Steam client EXTREMELY unstable, constant crashing, run errors

[Rewdalf]

This has been an ongoing issue for months now, and I have to say that having 62 of my games rendered useless because of Steam's poor compatability has gone beyond frustrating.

The client will only run for five or six minutes and then immediately freeze up. Does not matter if I am currently in a game, or just browsing. Even sitting idle in the background, after almost exactly five minutes, the client simply seizes up and terminates.

I have tried COUNTLESS fixes, including a complete wipe and re-install of steam, complete with registry tweaks, virus scans, and driver updates.
I have my firewall and anti-virus softwares turned off, checked all drivers to see if they are up to date, and went down the list of programs that may conflict with the client.

After about a month I got Steam to run stably only after restarting the computer. Upon putting it in sleep mode and booting it up again, Steam goes back to being completely unstable.
Occasionaly, during sessions where it has ran with no problems, it will also decide to freeze up an crash randomly, followed by refusing to run until another fresh restart of the computer.

Below I have gathered the crash report, and dxdiag from today's crashing sessions...

http://pastebin.com/SMqs1gat

If I catch the freeze and request an error report, it gives me the "apphangb1" error.
Upon checking this, I tried numerous fixes to prevent it, including re-installing direct X, updating sound drivers, completely changing out the speaker drivers, and updating the graphics drivers as well.
So far, nothing has helped.

In addition, I have run the program as an administrator, in compatability mode, and various other tedious methods to get it to stop crashing.

Below you can find the dxdiag report as well.

http://pastebin.com/c9bwdzRa

Any assistance is appreciated. I tried once before to seek help on the steam forums, but kept getting replies from people who either did not care to help, or didn't even try to give viable suggestions...

[Crypto Carlos]

It sounds like Steam for some reason doesn't like some piece of hardware or software you're running, that or a piece of hardware is failing. Are your motherboard drivers/SATA/BIOS up to date? Have you run a thorough MemTestx86 or other RAM tester to make sure all your RAM sticks are good? Have you run Scandisk or a similar utility to make sure nothing is wrong with your hard-drive? Have you verified that all Windows files/Windows itself is in good working condition?

[Rewdalf]

I've done checks on ALL of my drivers.
My RAM sticks are still fine.
I have absolutely no problems with my computer besides steam.
Literally, no other programs have conflicts, absolutely nothing else bugs out, and nothing but Steam runs improperly.

Problem hunting leads me to fixes that don't work, or I just stumble upon people with similar problems who never had their questions answered or issues resolved.

What happens to these people? Do they get rid of steam alltogether? I can't exactly do that because more than half of my games are on here and there's no way to run them without the client being stable...

[Crypto Carlos]

Did you actually test all of your RAM? Do you do anything else intensive on your computer other than game? Because if half of your games are on Steam and you don't really stress your computer otherwise it might stand to reason that steam might push it a bit harder, but that would be the games themselves, not the client. What are the specs of the machine (including operating system) that you're trying to run Steam on? Also, again, I would recommend running a hard-disk utility to make sure your hard-drive is logically/mechanically sound, as corrupted data/HD problems could cause this issue as Steam hits the disk drive I/O pretty hard.

[Rewdalf]

I just spent fifteen minutes typing a reply before Steam decided to freeze up and crash yet again.
On a fresh restart too, the only time it works...
Guess I can count that fix out. Steam is no longer stable on my computer.

I'll keep this quick lest it crashes AGAIN...

i7-3610QM Processor
CPU @ 2.30GHz
12.00 GB of RAM
Geforce GTX 670M

First two years I owned the computer, I had absolutely zero issue with Steam. This started happening two months ago, and I can't pinpoint the source...

[HLCinSC]

have you tried switching to or from the beta client?

[Rewdalf]

I've been opted out of the beta client since people reported problems with it.
Guess trying to opt in couldn't possibly screw things up any more.

Five crashes in the past hour, may I add.

[Pebbles]

true

[aiusepsi]

You could try using a profiler to see if it might be possible to find where it's hanging; I used to use Very Sleepy on Windows. May or may not help narrow exactly what it's doing when it's hanging.

[Rewdalf]

Tried the beta. Still crashes like clockwork.

[HLCinSC]

Does it also crash in offline mode?

[Nirnias]

If you are computer savy and care to do it. I would test each hardware component indivudally, start with mobo and CPU, boot, insert 1 stick of ram, boot, no errors, insert 2nd stick of ram, boot, no errors, rinse and repeat until no errors.

If you are 100% sure its not hardware related. Try go in to your MSCONFIG (click run and type it or windows key + R, disable all none Windows related applications that start on boot) clear cache (personally i reccommend CCleaner to clear cach + temp files)

[Rewdalf]

I've already run clean boots, and Safe Mode networking to try and fix errors.
I've got a laptop, and access to the memory sticks is, well, difficult.

I also regularly use CCleaner to keep my registry clean.

Alternatively, I ran Steam in offline mode for half an hour with no crashes.
So, I guess that helps. Though, I mostly use it to play with friends...

Time to go re-check my network drivers.

[Rewdalf]

So, after seeking out proper drivers for my ethernet device and downloading the setup installer, I uninstalled my current drivers.

Steam has been running off of my wifi for the past few minutes with seemingly no crashes...

Here's the trouble, the software "driver" setup I thought I installed from the official site for my computer turned out to be one of those "driver tuner" type softwares that requires you to register and pay for it.
What a damned rip-off...
So now I've got no ethernet drivers...