Steam Webhelper crashes 4000+ times (sandboxing)

[Elucidator]

Something is broken with the Browser Sandboxing mode.
It's the first time this happened to me (today), but I have read issues from other users about it before.

Steam Webhelper crashes and restarts endlessly till you click the Steam system tray icon and get the pop up message saying "Steam Webhelper is not responding."
You're then given the option to run it without sandboxing, which works.
And also this link:
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/6C3E-9504-CC20-AF49

My dumps folder is staggered with an endless list of files now.

FAULTING_IP: 
cfgmgr32!CmNotifyWnfNotificationCallback+2e
00007ffa`15397d3e 8b30            mov     esi,dword ptr [rax]

EXCEPTION_RECORD:  ffffffffffffffff -- (.exr 0xffffffffffffffff)
ExceptionAddress: 00007ffa15397d3e (cfgmgr32!CmNotifyWnfNotificationCallback+0x000000000000002e)
   ExceptionCode: c0000005 (Access violation)
  ExceptionFlags: 00000000
NumberParameters: 2
   Parameter[0]: 0000000000000000
   Parameter[1]: 0000000000000000
Attempt to read from address 0000000000000000

CONTEXT:  0000000000000000 -- (.cxr 0x0;r)
rax=0000000000000033 rbx=0000000000000000 rcx=0000000000000000
rdx=0000001cf0ffe110 rsi=000000000000ea60 rdi=0000000000000000
rip=00007ffa17df052a rsp=0000001cf0ffe0e8 rbp=0000001cf0fff5c0
 r8=0000000000000020  r9=0000000000000020 r10=0000000000000238
r11=0000001cee376be0 r12=ffffffffffffffff r13=0000000000000001
r14=0000001cf0ffe110 r15=00007ffa056a5b80
iopl=0         nv up ei pl zr na po nc
cs=0033  ss=0000  ds=0000  es=0000  fs=0053  gs=002b             efl=00000246
ntdll!NtDelayExecution+0xa:
00007ffa`17df052a c3              ret

DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID:  NULL_POINTER_READ

PROCESS_NAME:  steamwebhelper.exe

ERROR_CODE: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000005 - De instructie op 0x%08lx verwijst naar geheugen op 0x%08lx. Een lees- of schrijfbewerking op het geheugen is mislukt: %s.

EXCEPTION_CODE: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000005 - De instructie op 0x%08lx verwijst naar geheugen op 0x%08lx. Een lees- of schrijfbewerking op het geheugen is mislukt: %s.

EXCEPTION_PARAMETER1:  0000000000000000

EXCEPTION_PARAMETER2:  0000000000000000

READ_ADDRESS:  0000000000000000 

FOLLOWUP_IP: 
cfgmgr32!CmNotifyWnfNotificationCallback+2e
00007ffa`15397d3e 8b30            mov     esi,dword ptr [rax]

NTGLOBALFLAG:  0

APP:  steamwebhelper.exe

ANALYSIS_VERSION: 6.3.9600.17336 (debuggers(dbg).150226-1500) amd64fre

FAULTING_THREAD:  0000000000000fc8

PRIMARY_PROBLEM_CLASS:  NULL_POINTER_READ

BUGCHECK_STR:  APPLICATION_FAULT_NULL_POINTER_READ

LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER:  from 00007ffa17d76dee to 00007ffa15397d3e

This is from a different dump file, but it all points to the same thing:

STACK_TEXT:  
0000003f`f580f280 00007ffa`17d76dee : 41c64e6d`a3e60845 0000003f`b2dc16c8 0000003f`b2dc15e0 0000003f`b2d50000 : cfgmgr32!CmNotifyWnfNotificationCallback+0x2e
0000003f`f580f2e0 00007ffa`17d76abd : 00000000`00000000 0000003f`b2dc1690 0000003f`00000000 00000000`00000000 : ntdll!RtlpWnfWalkUserSubscriptionList+0x276
0000003f`f580f3c0 00007ffa`17d76946 : 00000000`00000000 0000003f`b2e2a130 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 : ntdll!RtlpWnfProcessCurrentDescriptor+0xf9
0000003f`f580f440 00007ffa`17d797ea : 00007ffa`17d768a0 00000000`00000000 0000003f`f580f658 0000003f`f580f658 : ntdll!RtlpWnfNotificationThread+0xa6
0000003f`f580f4a0 00007ffa`17d98e81 : 00007ffa`17d79690 0000003f`b2dd7f00 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000010 : ntdll!TppExecuteWaitCallback+0x92
0000003f`f580f4e0 00007ffa`153e1412 : 00000000`00000000 00007ffa`17d985a0 0000003f`b2d6aa30 00000000`00000000 : ntdll!TppWorkerThread+0x8e1
0000003f`f580f8c0 00007ffa`17d75504 : 00007ffa`153e13f0 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 : KERNEL32!BaseThreadInitThunk+0x22
0000003f`f580f8f0 00000000`00000000 : 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 : ntdll!RtlUserThreadStart+0x34


SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX:  0

SYMBOL_NAME:  cfgmgr32!CmNotifyWnfNotificationCallback+2e

FOLLOWUP_NAME:  MachineOwner

MODULE_NAME: cfgmgr32

IMAGE_NAME:  cfgmgr32.dll

DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP:  545042e5

STACK_COMMAND:  ~13s; .ecxr ; kb

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  NULL_POINTER_READ_c0000005_cfgmgr32.dll!CmNotifyWnfNotificationCallback

BUCKET_ID:  APPLICATION_FAULT_NULL_POINTER_READ_cfgmgr32!CmNotifyWnfNotificationCallback+2e

ANALYSIS_SOURCE:  UM

FAILURE_ID_HASH_STRING:  um:null_pointer_read_c0000005_cfgmgr32.dll!cmnotifywnfnotificationcallback

FAILURE_ID_HASH:  {934b596b-b91a-d773-c940-83d5aaf8e928}

[Elucidator]

For now, it appears that I am dependant on the "-cef-disable-sandbox" flag
Steam literally won't run for me (at least today) without it because of the crash loop with Webhelper

I did some investigating and uh... found nothing useful.
I also found out that my %localappdata%\Steam directory is 1.2GiB in size.
....Something feels wrong about that enormous amount of data.

C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Steam\html5app\htmlcache\Cache
contains 890 files and amasses 489MiB. How? Why?

C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Steam\htmlcache\Cache\Cache_Data
contains 1363 files and amasses 358MB

Does this have something to do with Steam not starting up normally?


Another 306MiB in
C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Steam\htmlcache\Code Cache\js
2142 files

What are you doing with this stuff? Why is it there? Can it be deleted?

[Elucidator]

Those endless amount of crash reports you get when trying to launch Steam, thanks to "Webhelper not responding"
amount to 500MiB per 650 files.

As I mentioned I found more than 4000 in one attempt to launch Steam. Another attempt 500 files
Another attempt between 700
Steam seems to remove most of then and keeps the last 28, but still...

This crash / bug problem is destroying SSDs with unnessecary writes.


---
I guess this will be difficult to figure out so:

My system hasn't had any change since the start of the year. I haven't used it differently either.
I am still running 8.1
Other systems however do not have this issue. Windows 7 and 8.1 users are running it fine.

Last year this issue showed up on Windows 10 users (randomly)
This year, a windows 11 user reported the problem, and fixed it by formatting their harddrive and reinstalling windows 11 from scratch... yeah----

Anyway, it is a random problem. I am not sure what is causing this. Steam validates its own files. The installation package should be good.

Those windows 10 and 11 users reported reinstalling Steam didn't help.

I suspect the issue stems from a security check. Perhaps the minute my clock is off is causing this problem, or maybe it has to do with the conversion from Linux Time to Windows time.

---
edit:
This issue spreads a lot bigger than it may seem.
There have been a number of videos showing up on youtube instructing Steam Users to run it as a Windows 8 application to fix the issue. (and commenters reporting it doesn't help lol)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx9BDimp5VI