[2022] Elite Dangerous Horizons and Steam

So I've played ED Horizons for 2743 hours and in all that time all I've had to do is launch ED (either from the Steam App or the ED launcher short cut) with no problems. Then the last week, it will launch once and if I quit the game and try to relaunch, ED launcher throws an error saying I need to link the game to my Frontier account. Per others having issues like this, I restarted my PC and it works just fine until the next time I try to launch ED and I get the error message again, so I restart my PC, ad infinitum.

This wasn't a problem and all of a sudden has become one. Anybody else start experiencing this and have a permanent solution other than having to restart my PC ever single time I want to play?

Thanks in advance for any sage advice or wisdom you can bestow. Not sure what changed other than there were a few Steam updates applied in the last week.

o7