[SOLVED] Presence of Steam on new PC crashes Windows explorer

[TheRealGru]

Hello all. I just built a PC (my first ever build). Downloading and installing Steam makes my PC not respond to any inputs. It seems as if Windows explorer is crashing (windows seems frozen/not doing anything but cursor works and it moves around). I cannot even open Steam at all. Restarting PC makes no difference and crashes again without even touching or attempting to open Steam.

Only way I can open steam is launching it from Windows Safe mode with networking (that is how I am posting this).

I've been trying to troubleshoot this for hours. I should mention that other launchers like EA app work fine. it is just Steam that has this issue.

Does anyone know how I can fix this? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance

My System Specs are:

Processor AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16-Core Processor, 4500 Mhz, 16 Core(s), 32 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 1616, 5/16/2023

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 64.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 63.1 GB
Available Physical Memory 59.9 GB
Total Virtual Memory 72.1 GB
Available Virtual Memory 69.2 GB

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090

[Illusion of Progress]

In Windows safe mode, drivers aren't loaded (the networking ones will be in the respective safe mode) and your startup stuff is disabled. If it works there, it sounds like a conflict with some other software running or a bad/missing driver? I'm not sure what in particular might cause that with Steam, though.

[TheRealGru]

I forgot to mention that the steps I've tried are:

Updated all drivers
Uninstall steam (can only uninstall it in windows safe mode) and reinstalled it

I do believe steam is conflicting with something because when I go in safe mode and remove steam then Windows starts working as it should again.

[Illusion of Progress]

Disable all non-essential startup software and background tasks. Try installing Steam. If it still happens, it's possibly a driver (or some software/process is still running). If that fixes it, enable all things one by one until you find the problematic one through trial and error.

[TheRealGru]

SOLVED

I ended up just reinstalling windows and now works fine.