PC [Help] Game doesn't start

[Farmer37]

I have played this game on this PC before and decided to replay it again to experience the new content in 1.5. When I click "Play" in steam I get a dialog saying "Preparing to launch Stardew Valley". The button changes to "Stop". Then the dialog disappears and the button changes back to "Play". This only takes a second or two so I can't tell if anything appears in the task manager.

I uninstalled the game previously and deleted everything in the steam and AppData folders before reinstalling so I'm pretty sure I have a fresh installation unless the game saves data anywhere else. I tried to follow the troubleshooting guide below and my answers are in bold:

• Make sure either headphones or speakers are plugged in. An active audio source of some kind is required in order to play Stardew Valley (this will be fixed in update 1.4). I am using headphones plugged into my monitor which is plugged into the PC via HDMI and everything seems to work fine. I think I had the same setup the last time I played this game.
• Delete the startup_preferences folder in %AppData%/StardewValley I deleted the StardewValley folder completely. I don't care about old save files. I wanted to start fresh anyway.
• Go into the game file directly and then into the folder titled “_CommonRedist”, then “XNA”, then “4.0”, then “xnafx40_redist” installer. Once there, run the installer and hit repair. I don't have the “_CommonRedist” folder. I imagine this is the problem. How do I get this?
• If you don’t have SMAPI installed, right-click on Stardew Valley in Steam, then go to Properties > Set Launch Options, and make sure it is empty. I don't have SMAPI installed and no launch options.

My PC:

• Windows 7
• Intel Core i7
• Nvidia GTX 1070
• 24 GB RAM
• Plenty of free disk space

Again, the game ran flawlessly on this PC in the past. The last time I played and it worked without problem was in December 2019. Also, there are no error logs or crash reports in the AppData folder. Please let me know if you need any more information.

Any assistance would be really appreciated! Thank you!