Bug/Issue Crashes or endlessly loads when i start a character

Starbound has never run "smoothly" per se, but lately it's stopped working at all. It started with all my saves disappearing. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling everything, including steam, and removing all mods as well. Since then whenever i try and create a character i can make one, but after i try and start the game it will endlessly load (or if I tried to skip the intro mission) crash immediately.

My OS is windows 10 Home 2017, and I run Starbound + steam off of a Silicon Power terabyte external harddrive. please help me, i really miss playing! i was running it successfully with FU and all kinds of mods, i don't know what went wrong.

i don't play in fullscreen usually, because it tends to cause more lag, but i've tried and it hasn't made a difference to the errors i'm receiving.