...the steam engine that couldnt...

ok, for the past 3 weeks or so ive noticed that steam is very sluggish when loading and exiting. i chalked it up to my at&t tyrants cutting my dsl service back to the lowest tier offered. but i dont think thats the case.

im not noticing terrible choke/loss/lag issues while playing. crashes are about the same as before. so im not sure dsl speed has anything to do with it.

anyway, when i start steam it takes 20-30 seconds to load. each time im like... fuck, this is the time it wont load. the only weirdness ingame involves alt-tabbing to desktop. when i do this lately, i cant do anything to bring the game back up. i click on the taskbar tab to bring it up and get a warning beep. right clicking does nothing (no menu popup). once in awhile, if i wait 2 or 3 minutes, i can click the tab and pull the game back up... but again, it loads very slow. i usually have to go to task manager and kill it... resulting in the microsoft error reporting box. now, every single time i quti the game and exit steam... i get one of 2 things: the microsoft error reporting box or a steam popup box stating that only one instance of hl2dm can be run at one time (something like that, i cant remember the actual wording at the moment). when i get the steam popup box, it takes me several tries over 3 or 4 minutes before it either exits as it should or gives me the microsoft error reporting box.

it seems to me like steam is running something in the background. but i'll be damned if i know what or how to stop it. any ideas? i only have hl2, hl2dm, hl2dmpro, and hl2dmOB games. i dont think its any of those updating in the background.

suggestions?

heh odd...

This is a huge shot in the dark...but when is the last time you checked for spyware and cleaned it out?

Have you tried verifying the cache and defragmenting local files through steam, not the windows defragger?

i thought of that too. i run a spyware and virus scan at least 2 times a week. also a registry/file cleaner daily. since this issue startd, ive verified integrity several times. also the defrag local files (although it has ALWAYS been 0% fragmented) several times. i even defragged the hard-drives. lol

i dont notice this with my browser, just steam.

i suspect my issue is somehow related to this topic: http://www.hl2dm-university.com/forum/p ... batch+file

but im getting the hang everytime i quti, not just from crashes.

Last time i had weird issues with steam, REINSTALLING the latest flashplayer version and rolling firefox back 1 version fixed it.

well, i think ive narrowed it down to the hl2.exe. thats what the microsoft error box points to as the problem.

it seems to want to keep running even after i attempt to exit steam.

Have you tried switching into a different server? Go to the settings.