All,
I had to reinstall the game twice to get it working. In the first reinstall, I only removed the game content from the Steam folder in C:\Program Files (x86). I then reinstalled not only from the game DVD that I own, but also I downloaded content from Steam (had to). This process took a long time using my slow (1.5 meg DSL). When finished, I noted that all my old Saves had been reestablished in Documents > Fallout New Vegas > Saves, even though I had deleted them before reinstalling. Apparently Steam keeps duplicates of the game on their servers. I didn't know this. However, I launched the newly reinstalled game and got the same error message as before: Fallout New Vegas Launcher has stopped working. Oh, no! Tears streaming down my face. Not really.
No amount of fiddling with the settings and what have you resolved the problem. I searched the Internet and found several posts by users having the same problem. I tried all of the fixes suggested by those users and which had worked for them. Even so, none of those fixes worked for me. I spent a long time messing with this.
After that, I decided to take Erzherzoghans's (post above) advice and reinstall to a different directory/folder. I removed all Steam entries in C:\Program Files (x86), and also I removed the Steam folder itself. I left no trace of anything relating to Steam in that location. I then cleaned the registry using ccleaner, removing all references (I hoped) to Steam in the registry. I also removed the game folder containing the .ini files and the Saves located in Documents (again). I then defragged the hard drive and rebooted. I thought this process would clean all items for the game and Steam from my system, along with any glitches causing my issue.
I then reinstalled the game to C:\Steam from the game DVD, and then I downloaded the rest from the Steam website (no way around this). Again, this took several hours. When everything finished reinstalling for the second time, I launched the game and received no errors. The game took off with no issues. Again, all my old Saves had been reestablished in the Fallout NV folder in Documents. I played the game starting from my last Save made in the old game that had been removed. Steam knows everything we do in that game. Go figure.
Fritz