Steam problems, culminating in Windows Explorer crashes in Win7 64bit

[SJ NM]

I have been having problems with my Steam client for some weeks now. This has usually been in the form of constant update loops upon startup. Recently I was able to get the client to start normally but the client itself was almost useless; I was unable to do anything with it except view my games library - the store, community and the rest were unavailable.

I browsed the help forums for steam looking for answers, and was pushed to the point where I un-installed steam altogether and re-installed it. All seemed to be going OK until I entered my user ID and password. Steam seemed to load OK then I get the message "Windows Explorer has stopped working". This has never happened before on my PC and no matter what I did Explorer would keep crashing just after startup.

Eventually I was able to uninstall steam again. This seems to have resolved the Windows Explorer crashes but I am understandably reluctant to re-install steam again in case the same problm re-occurs.

Does anyone have any advice? I'm not at all confident with computers but I would appreciate any help.

Thanks.

 

[SJ NM]

No answers from anybody?

Let me assure you all I have given as much information as I can, since there was no error code from the Win Explorer crash and (since I un-installed Steam) no more crashes.

 

[Solarstarshines]

Did you ever give steam permissions such a network and admin could be the reason it failed

 

[SJ NM]

No permissions were changed as far as I know, and I'm not even sure if that would be enough to cause Windows Explorer to crash.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Unless you pissed off Steam I would inquire with them if there's an issue with your account that seems when everything goes south :/