Playing Skyrim SE 1.5.97 on Windows 10, I found the game repeatedly freezing on startup, for reasons no one could explain. I was advised to reinstall and then downgrade, which I did. Now, it boots up so far as "Compiling Shaders", and in the middle of that crashes. I have checked for corrupted files, mod conflicts, load order, everything. Nothing helps.

The only thing I haven't checked is Steam itself. Steam just freezes up. The icon is still there on the Toolbar, but when I click it, nothing happens. I checked the Task Manager, and got this:

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e7/25/4e/e7254e67fe6edaa3ba68dc722d24a777.jpg

The Steam Client WebHelper reproduces itself multiple times and then stops working. Looks like you have a loop, and I would like to know how to fix it.