I am using the Steam version of the game and Windows 8.1.  For the past few months, every time I start NF for the first time since the last restart, the game crashes just before the SD Enternet.  Then the next time I start it, it will work fine.  This happens every time I restart Windows without fail.  

Many times, the game will close and an error message pops up saying that NF had to close and is searching for a solution.  Other times, it just sits there with a black screen and if I click two times, it asks if I want to close the program or wait for it to respond.  On these instances, if I close the game, it does not actually close.  It says that I am still in the game in Steam, and if I view the task manager, I can still see the NF2_CLIENT process running.  If I go to the details and tell it to end task, it says that access is denied.  Somehow I lose my administrator priviledges, and I cannot run a command prompt as an administrator and kill the process using the kill command.

I already tried telling windows to run both the launcher and the client executables as Administrator, but it was doing this same thing both before and after I did this.  Any ideas?