Steam games not launching, task manager freezing, but everything else works perfectly.

Hello,

I had this exact same issue. Every time I switched focus from a game, the game would freeze. The task manager had the same symptoms as described above. Steam showed the game as running/stopping when it was already closed. Even the safe mode behaved the same as described; no more freezing for either the programs or the task manager, but the game was unplayably slow and cpu usage jumped way too high.
Reinstalling windows didn't help, nor reinstalling any of the programs or drivers, nor doing any system clean or repair.

However, I believe I found a solution. As crazy as it sounds, these issues only appear depending on the port that my monitor's hdmi cable is plugged into. If the hdmi cable is plugged into the motherboard port, these issues are consistent and repeatable. If the hdmi cable is plugged into the gpu's hdmi port however, the issues completely disappear. So if you have an hdmi connection that's plugged into the motherboard, try plugging it into the gpu instead.

If that's not the issue, hopefully it can still help you narrow down potential causes.

Hello there!
I have got my PC built by a company which specialises in building custom PCs and shipping them to you, plug them all in and boot them up and you should be good to go.
Well, firstly, it arrived with some faulty components so they had to replace the GPU and a stick of RAM and now it works fine.
Why I'm mentioning this is because the third issue (one was related to the faulty RAM while the other was related to a faulty 7900), was the exact same thing that you had.
No games would work (somehow they only managed to get Skyrim to work lmao), I start them and the title screen only shows a black screen and then it either crashes to desktop or I have to use the Task Manager to forcefully close it. Same with the Brave Browser. But then something else happened. As soon as I pressed 'End Task' the process would be moved into a background process. I close and re-open the Task Manager and all the icons were greyed out, if you pressed any other tab it wouldn't work, like the 'Details' tab would show blank, under CPU all processes showed 0% usage. Literally the same thing as you have, and a handful of people online.

Only when the PC came back with all components working properly and with this issue still persisting, I knew it was neither a Windows issue per se or a hardware issue.
Now, your situation might be similar to mine, but what I had was this: only by pure dumb luck, I opened the Radeon Adrenalin software and looked at the 'Performance' tab. What I have seen is that the CPU was running at 99-100% utilisation, while the RX 7900 only ran at 5-7%.
I opened Assassin's Creed Valhalla and while it was stuck on the title screen, I had the Adrenalin Overlay running which has shown also that the CPU temps at that time jumped to nearly a 100 degrees Celsius which is a huuuuuge red flag! But the 7900's stats were.... non-existent.

And lastly, I've had this combination of issues: my monitor would not work unless it was plugged into the motherboard's DisplayPort or HDMI port. If I tried plugging it in into the 1 HDMI or 3 DisplayPort on the GPU (which sorted this similar issue for other users, just saying!).... nothing, just showed no signal. I'm like.... ok. But since I used laptops for over 10 years, I also somehow forgot how desktop PCs should work. As I have the tempered glass on the side of the case, I saw that the only LED part of it is the GPU's XFX logo and it wasn't turned on and also the massive cooling fan was inactive, wasn't spinning at all.

I spoke with my IT friend who helped me pick the components and all and through some light troubleshooting, we came to an interesting conclusion. Somehow, either during their own testing of the PC before sending it to me or something, we have realised that the PC is SOLELY using all of its graphic output on the APU, i.e. the small in-build integrated graphics card on the processor (in my case - it's a thing with only 2 cores).

And that is when it all made sense. If you look at it:
1.) Brave Browser, unlike other apps, depends on GPU processing power, and not the CPUs (like Chrome or other programs, so videos and films and YouTube work perfectly fine). Seeing how the GPU output on the APU is so low, it crashes the thing and overloads it, thus messing up the Task Manager and making it crash since it cannot calculate properly the usage of the CPU due to being overwhelmed.

2.) Same with all the other games. Skyrim was one of the only games I had installed and once they used it for testing, it worked once the components were fixed. And of course, it worked. Skyrim is the modern DOOM so it runs on a freakin' toaster! And these newer APUs have enough power to make even such a game run on high settings without any problems. To further test this, I installed a game from the late 90s - a classic, Jazz Jackrabbit 2 which has like 600MB in total. And guess what? It ran perfectly fine. Because it's ancient and requires almost 0 power from modern components.

3.) The GPU was basically active, but kept inactive/dormant due to not being used by the PC at all for all of its processes, hence the monitor was not working or anything. Unlike laptops which are made specifically to allow an almost smoothness cooperation between integrated and dedicated graphics, desktop PCs at the moment don't seem to always do it and they interfere with each other. Especially, since modern Ryzen CPUs come with in-built 2-core APUs at the very least. Another note: once your desktop has a dedicated GPU, your integrated graphics don't have to be running at all, as they should be primarily used for running tests on a new graphic card or doing PC troubleshooting in general. Not for everyday use, especially gaming.

The solution? It's so simple I nearly tossed the whole thing out the window.
Device Manager --> Display Adaptors
Depending on what you have, I had two options: my 7900 XFX graphic card (external) and the AMD Radeon (TM) Graphics (integrated graphics card).
(Note: if your dedicated GPU is working correctly, Windows will allow you to do the next step)
At that point, right-click on your integrated graphics card option and press "Disable device"
Confirm the pop-up window if it appears.

Then I turned off my PC, unplugged the monitor from the motherboard into the GPU DisplayPort and turned the PC again (if in your case, the PC is already plugged into the GPU, just restart it).
And would you believe it! No more issues. Brave Browser opens fine, all games work as they should, Task Manager doesn't crash and all is well.
I hope that anything from my essay above helps you or someone else as this seems to be quite a weird issue that only affects certain people and mostly on quite new configurations.

My specs:
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XFX
32 GB RAM DDR5

I have almost exactly the same problem.
It began when I installed a brand new win 11 in a brand new PC. This PC es way more powerful than the old one, with current technology and all the proper updates, however it doesn't work were the old one did.

Many steam games don't properly launch, but then they also won't stop.
However, some games based on older technology seem to work normally. (Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8 and Granblue Fantasy Rising wont launch, but Under-Night in Birth 2 does launch without problem).

Brave only shows a white window, seems to try to launch, then stops.

The task manager gets stuck too. The only way to stop the not-launched-yet-running programs is to restart the PC.

3 additional details that might be worth exploring:
1- There was a "low level fatal error" message appearing for the not launching games during the first week. It appeared only several minutes after trying to open the game. It doesn't appear anymore.
2- I was able to "repair" Granblue Fantasy Rising by messing with the compatibility of the shipping and exe files. I ran the automatic compatibility setup that windows provide, so I don't really know what changed. This didn't work for Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8 or for Brave.
3- When restarting the PC after trying to start one of these programs, there is a super brief message just before the PC shuts down. It reads:
"explorer.exe - Application error. The instruction at 0x00007FFBA24E3ACA referenced memory at 0x0000000000000024. The memory could not be written."

That sucks! :( I just recovered my PC by removing everything and doing a fresh install. Still hasn't helped the problems I have..

Hi!

I finally had time to back things up and do an entire new installation of Windows 11. I followed:

Windows Update > Advanced options > Recovery > Reset this PC > Remove everything.

However, this has not helped. I installed Steam and Green Hell (game), which I cannot launch ("Green Hell .Exe not responding").

After checking the task manager, the same problem persists as well.

What else should I try to further locate the problem?