possible fix: Random freezes + sound loops during freezes

[Absent]

It's the bandwidth of your hard drive.

Every Source game has this issue. Let me go in further on this subject.

I currently have a build which contains an SSD (not sure about the speeds, believe it's 300MB) and a hard drive at 5400RPM (80 MB read/write). I had issues with running out of space on the SSD, so I moved TF2 over to the hard drive. What happened? Loading speeds were the same, but the game kept having random freezes about every minute, which lasted for 1 to 2 seconds each, with the sound clip from the last half second looping over the duration. I decided to move TF2 around my SSD and hard drive, along with Garry's Mod and L4D2 to do some testing, and it turns out that every time the games are on the hard drive, random freezes happen.

I could test this out further. I am planning on switching out the blue drive for two TB blacks in RAID 0, which should significantly raise their speed. If the games don't freeze on it, I can only conclude that Source games eat up the bandwidth of your drives.

The solution to your random freezes? Free up hard drive space, defragment it and defrag the game files internally with Steam. Surefire solution would be getting a faster harddrive / SSD, but not many people can buy these / know how to change out their hard drive / don't want to change it out due to being afraid to damage anything.

Test devices:
Kingston SSDNow! v3 120 GB (300 MB Read / Write)
Western Digital Blue mobile 5400 RPM 500 GB (80 MB Read / Write)

[Best Froggo]

mine is my processor, not my hard drive. Pretty sure having 100 gigs free, and defragged on a weekly basis means it wouldn't fix that.

[Radiant Malevolence]

I may have found a fix for anyone that has this problem. Add these two commands to your autoexec.

sv_forcepreload 1
cl_forcepreload 1

My game was freezing and sound looping all the time and these commands fixed it. Might not work for everyone, but worth a try.

[Best Froggo]

Originally posted by jacob:

Originally posted by Radiant Malevolence:

I may have found a fix for anyone that has this problem. Add these two commands to your autoexec.

sv_forcepreload 1
cl_forcepreload 1

My game was freezing and sound looping all the time and these commands fixed it. Might not work for everyone, but worth a try.

i'll check it out
if this is gonna break my game i'm gonna murder you

if I remember right it makes it slightly slower to load at the start but keeps everything loaded into RAM?

[Radiant Malevolence]

Originally posted by Malik Blishtar:

Originally posted by jacob:

i'll check it out
if this is gonna break my game i'm gonna murder you

if I remember right it makes it slightly slower to load at the start but keeps everything loaded into RAM?

Yep, that's exactly what it does.

[Best Froggo]

Originally posted by jacob:

Originally posted by Radiant Malevolence:

Yep, that's exactly what it does.

is it good then?

yes, so long as your computer isn't some old potato with 2 gigs of RAM

[MA☝Omgwtfbbqstfu™]

I think the defrag option for just the game in steam no longer exists.

[SWOKE]

Did you must type the command on the steam launcher ? because it doesn't work for me

[MaddDoktor [Linux]]

Since your drive mentions "mobile" the only time I had that problem was when trying to run TF2 on a laptop in Linux using its integrated Intel graphics instead of its Nvidia graphics on a gaming laptop with dual graphics. With the Intel graphics frame rate was forever poor and sound constantly repeated in short loops.

That has never been a problem when using Nvidia graphics from a hard drive on that laptop, or my main PC which has been running Linux Steam and TF2 since Jan 2013 (different account).

An an older laptop with SATA 1 and 5400 rpm drive might be no faster than an external USB 2.0 drive. But I don't think that should affect the already loaded game unless short on memory and using virtual RAM (swapping RAM to/from disk). SSD on such a laptop was 4 times faster, but I have not run Steam on that laptop because it only has very old slow Intel graphics from 2006.

[Absent]

Originally posted by Sheik:

Did you must type the command on the steam launcher ? because it doesn't work for me

You can do it in several ways as far as I know.

1. Creating an autoexec.cfg file in your config folder in the TF2 directory, and putting both lines into it.
2. Putting them in the launch options of TF2 (Right click in steam: Properties > Set launch options) like this without quotes: " -cl_forcepreload 1 -sv_forcepreload 1 "

However, changing the sv variable might only work on a local server.

[.dethrattle]

Here's something else that helps: increase the size of the Windows disc cache. If you have at least 8GB of ram, change the "LargeSystemCache" registry entry and reboot. I did that earlier today and it made a noticeable difference for me. The complete instructions on what to change are on this page here:

http://en.kioskea.net/faq/7106-windows-7-increase-the-performance-of-disk-cache


For those too lazy to click the link ;) :

-Open the Start menu, click Run and type the command: regedit.
-Find the following key:
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management".
-In the right column find the "LargeSystemCache" value and double click on it.
-Change the value of LargeSystemCache from 0 to 1, making sure the Hexadecimal option is checked

-Restart your PC to apply the changes.

If the value does not exist you will need to create it:

-Click on an empty part of the window and click "New".
-Select New > 32-bit DWORD value and name it "LargeSystemCache".
-Double click on the value and select "Edit".
-Change the value of LargeSystemCache from 0 to 1, making sure the Hexadecimal option is checked
-Restart your PC to apply the changes.

[Zer0Spectrum | Trade.tf]

Dosnt work i also have a pink and black screen

[.dethrattle]

Originally posted by SenpaiZer0:

Dosnt work i also have a pink and black screen

It sounds like you have something else going on then. To me that sounds like either there's a problem with your graphics card or the graphics card drivers are corrupted. Try uninstalling the drivers and doing a fresh install. If that doesn't work, check to see if the card is overheating.

[Absent]

Doubt that it's the graphics card overheating. If the entire screen is pink and black when playing, your HUD is invalid.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/CP3EZPQlKtQ/hqdefault.jpg

[MS32]

I have tried every other suggestion under the sun
(·Verify file integrity/game cache
·Re-install TF2
·Re-install steam
·Turn off multicore-rendering
·Play on DirectX 8 (or9))
None of them worked - but almost all the corresponding threads had people relaying symptoms identical to mine, and some people gave up and blamed it on Valve altogether for poor optimization - could make sense, I never used to have this issue, only the last month, when I started playing again (have played this for years).

Now I realise, after reading this thread, that I'd moved my steam library to my HDD (previously my SSD). It's highly likely that this is the culprit.

I am currently (as of writing this post) re-installing TF2 on my SSD, gonna see if it's fixed, then *fingers crossed*

I will report back my results.

[MS32]

Works!
Thanks