Surface Pro Issue: Won't start Steampowered games

[joshuastronomy]

I've been able to get Steam running pretty well on my Surface Pro and have played several Steampowered games (FTL, Spacechem, others) and some non- like Civ V. Just today I can't get a single Steampowered game to run; it just opens a white window for a split second and falls away. Spacechem.exe will stay open in the background, other games just disappear from Task Manager completely. I've verified cache, deleted appcache and clientregistry.blob, reinstalled steam, updated .net 4.5, did windows update, everything I can think of and still no dice. Everything should be running in Administrator and I've made no major system or setting changes since the last time these games have worked. Is anyone having a similar issue or another path I can try?

[joshuastronomy]

Additionally I've disabled Windows defender and the firewall just in case, and tried running these games in Offline mode.

[joshuastronomy]

Fixed, at least temporarily. Refreshed PC (one step short of factory reset) and only installed Steam, the games in question, and the required .NET framework download. Steam said it was installing 3.5, but when I tried installing 4.5 after that to see if the latest release was the problem the .NET Framework installer said it was already on 4.5. Games still work so I'm giving it a break for now because I don't think I can take much more LOL I'M WINDOWS BEING WINDOWS before I break something on purpose.