When I read your fix, I thought I had finally found the answer to my problem. Unfortunately steam is still freezing my entire computer when I click on the steam.exe file.
I have done a number of things to try and remedy the problem. I have searched countless forums and tried many things with no success. If anyone has any suggestions, I am desperate to get steam working again. I cannot begin to describe how frustrated I am. I will try to briefly summarize what I've already done.
It seems the problem started when I closed steam quickly one day. I just shut down the computer without shutting steam down first. I guess this made problem?
From then on, whenever I try to launch steam, it just freezes the whole computer.
First, I deleted the clientreg.blob file from the steam folder. No affect. I did start getting error message of the clientblob serielized something header missing on steam.exe.
Then, I deleted everything in steam folder except app folder and steam.exe. No affect.
Then, I uninstalled steam completely and completely formatted the drive that steam and it's games were installed on. Reinstalled steam. The first message I get is that I need to turn off all compatibility settings for steam.exe. There were no compatibility settings checked in the properties box. I found ZeroHour's message about deleting registry values and tried that. No affect, it just freezes the whole computer when I click on steam.exe.
PLEASE HELP!!
I don't know what else to try.
sincerely... a truly frustrated gamer.
