I'm having a frustrating issue where my PC crashes every time I open Steam, and sometimes even with other applications. This has been a recurring problem for a while. I've experienced blue screens of death before and had to reinstall Windows via USB twice to fix them. Currently, Steam causes my entire system to crash, forcing me to shut it down using the power button, which has led me to get stuck in a 'preparing automatic repair' loop recently. I've tried running sfc/scannow, which detects some corrupted files but claims to fix them. Here are my specs: MSI B560M PRO-VDH WIFI, 11th gen Intel Core i7, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, 16 GB RAM DDR4 3000, SSD NVMe ADATA SWORDFISH (about 230-250 GB free), and an unused HDD ST1000DM010-2EP102. I'm running Windows 11. I'm not super tech-savvy, so I appreciate any advice or guidance you can offer. Also, I recently tried uninstalling Epic Games because its launcher wasn't working, but now my computer freezes in the same way whenever I try to uninstall it. I suspect the issue might be related to my SSD.
2 Answers
I faced a similar issue with my PC, and it turned out to be a problem with my NVMe SSD. There were some compatibility issues that required tweaking the registry on Windows 11 to prevent crashes. You might want to check this guide on Tom's Hardware for any fixes. If you're also experiencing issues uninstalling Steam, it might help to first try reinstalling it cleanly. Let me know how it goes!
It sounds like you're dealing with some pretty frustrating crashes! To diagnose those blue screens, you should gather dump files from your system. If you can boot into Windows normally or through Safe Mode, check the C:WindowsMinidump folder for any crash logs. Zip those files and upload them to a file-sharing site; it's crucial for figuring out what's going wrong. If you don't see any files, or if you only have one, check out guides on how to configure Windows to create them properly. Multiple dump files would definitely help in identifying the cause!
Thanks for the tip! I’ll check that out. In the meantime, I'm planning to uninstall Steam and reinstall it, since that seems to be the main issue.