What's wrong with steam?

[Crow]

I get home today update steam as it does frequently and now it's laggy the pages of anything take forever to load and to type my problem is like I'm on an old computer built 20 years ago the lag is so bad. If I go to launch a game with workshop content like arma 3 and such the game will not launch and they crash out on me but everything else runs superb on my machine but steam is just broke for some reason on my end with really bad lag.

[Zapix]

This problem popped up nearly a month ago. The whole clearing the cache and all is nonsense and doesn't fix the problem. The fix is to exit steam and reload it. However, the problem will immediately return upon rebooting the computer. Once you reboot, you have to once again exit steam that one time and it goes back to working fine no matter how many times you restart Steam... Until you reboot the PC.

I've also stopped steam from loading with Windows (in the settings) and tried just dumping a shortcut in the startup folder. The problem still occurs on booting the PC. Running as admin is also useless. Lastly, I did try reinstalling Steam. Didn't help.

And it's not a case of "it must be your PC." I have 2 PCs (both Windows 7 Ultimate, 64bit), one of them being a 5960X with 2 GTX 1080 cards, 32gb of DDR4 ram, and running off an m.2 drive that gets speeds twice that of your SATA SSD. The other being a 990X with 2 GTX 980 cards. Oh and my internet? Well over 200mb/s. Wired. Stuff your theory that it's my pc. Both PCs are affected and have been for the last month (since the update in late May)

Something to do with Steam loading after booting is the problem. After you reload Steam you can change users, etc, whatever. It's as if "well, it's fixed! cool!" ... No. Turn off your PC, turn it back on, and it comes back.

Pretty much everything except the library window becomes non responsive and appears to be on a less than dial up connection. But it's not a PC problem, and it's not an internet problem.

ALL of this started (for me) with the update near the end of May. There's been several threads with people posting the exact same problem.

Link to an older thread.
http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/1291817837635333702/

[syrianes]

here too everything is slow also typing this message , the slider take a while to scroll the pages and sometime i cant connect what's up?

[The Giving One]

引用自 Zapix：

And it's not a case of "it must be your PC." I have 2 PCs (both Windows 7 Ultimate, 64bit), one of them being a 5960X with 2 GTX 1080 cards, 32gb of DDR4 ram, and running off an m.2 drive that gets speeds twice that of your SATA SSD. The other being a 990X with 2 GTX 980 cards. Oh and my internet? Well over 200mb/s. Wired. Stuff your theory that it's my pc. Both PCs are affected and have been for the last month (since the update in late May)

Once again, I see several "It's not this and it's not that" in a post where someone is looking for help apparently to solve a problem.

Where is the logic, please ?

If you knew what it WAS, then you would not have posted here seemingly asking for help. The last thing anyone should be doing is making assumptions in a troubleshooting process like this.

Just work the problem and take all possibilities into account. It may be the network, and it may be your Steam client, but then again, it may not. Don't make assumptions.

My Steam client works fine here. Loads up in seconds and my games all launch from Steam just fine. This is not to suggest others don't have problems right now and need help, but it does suggst it is NOT Steam causing it, but the issue on one's computer or network or other that IS causing it WITH Steam.

引用自 Zapix：

This problem popped up nearly a month ago. The whole clearing the cache and all is nonsense and doesn't fix the problem. /

It's called a step in a process of elimination or troubleshooting. Start simple and move on to the more complex. We don't tell people here to start taking their computers apart in the first steps when they need help. We start simple and then move on to the next step.

Clearing the cache is not "nonsense" just because it did not solve your issue right off the bat. Not "nonsense" in any regard, mind you. Feel free to use the forum search and see for yourself before saying something we often post here to help people is "nonsense".

If you would like help, I would kindly request the same information that I requested from others in the thread that you posted in. Thank you.

[Cypher]

I had this issue quite recently. You'll need to remove the 'userdata' folder from your steam folder. It's quite safe to do so, since the client just generates a new one. Your safe files will be quite safe too, since most of that sh!t is backed up on the cloud anyways. I think what's happened to some of us, is that data's somehow been corrupted, either via a steam update, or a windows update.

In anycase, try that.

[Gimme 5 yen]

bad steam :(

[Zapix]

I reported it directly to Steam support along with system info from both of my PCs. They suggested running [(insert drive here):\(insert folders here)\steamservice.exe" /repair] which also did nothing. They responded that they can't help fix the problem right now, and closed it.
I kind of expected something better than Comcast's support. LOL
I wasn't let down, I was dropped!

[The Giving One]

引用自 Zapix：

I reported it directly to Steam support along with system info from both of my PCs. They suggested running [(insert drive here):\(insert folders here)\steamservice.exe" /repair] which also did nothing. They responded that they can't help fix the problem right now, and closed it.
I kind of expected something better than Comcast's support. LOL
I wasn't let down, I was dropped!

It does not seem to be affecting everyone, so that is surely important to understand. Of course, it is affecting some, so I am not saying it does not need to be addressed in a future update possibly.

Maybe it is somehow related to the sale, as another user said. I cannot say. Just glad the community came together and have helped to pass on a possible way to fix it for now at least.

Amazing what we all can accomplish when we work together. Thanks.

[Zapix]

I've been poking at this ever since I posted. I reinstalled Steam and it worked fine. Added userdata folder, everything was fine. Added the steamapps folder and it went back to breaking.

Removed all game installation (.acf) files and reloaded.. Everything was fine.
Put back the files for the main drive. Everything was fine.
Put back the steamlibrary files for a secondary drive. Everything was fine.
Added back the files for the third drive... BOOM! Problems.

Now that I know where the problem is, I might just be able to figure out the root cause. If it's a problem with the folder or a particular game causing it, I'm not sure yet. I'll post again when I know.

Running a repair on the folder right now. I initially removed a bunch of game install files that were updated around the time of the update, though I didn't quite go back far enough. SteamVR was my initial guess (since it's installed there), but that wasn't it either. It's gonna be a while before the repair is done, but I'll be back.

EDIT: Also, keep in mind I have this issue on 2 different PCs. Been working with the secondary pc, so I'm looking for something in common.

EDIT: I'm going to just go set everything on fire now. So I slowly added back the install files and ran into 2 batches that had problems. I removed the working stuff and readded the broken ones. ... And didn't have a problem. Slowly added back the working ones and no problems. So, now it's all working, and I... I give up! I know as much as it's related to the steamapps and steamlibrary folders and the .acf files within them. My suggestion is, if you have this problem, delete all the install (.acf) files for your games (you can ignore the workshop files) and just steam rebuild them. Or you can remove them and slow re add them, rebooting after each batch. Now to toy with my primary pc. #setitonfire


TL:DR - steamapps and/or steamlibrary folders appear to be the cause.


UPDATE: Well... On my primary PC now... Did the above, got to 248 games installed on my 6tb drive without a problem. Added the last 14, and problems. Removed them, added a few. Problems. Removed them and added others, problems. Added all 14 removed a bunch of other ones that already cleared. No problems. Seems like a number game now, but... By random chance, one of the removed ones was SteamVR, which was noted by Steam asking me to install it when Steam launched. Added everything back (262 total) in EXCEPT SteamVR... zero problems. That being said, SteamVR was also on the secondary computer in the library folder giving me problems.

Would be nice to know if other people also have either 250+ games install in a single library folder or SteamVR are also having this problem. narrow this down!

Edit: Installed SteamVR on another drive, all is fine now it seems. Going to bed now, I can rest in peace!

[Zapix]

SteamVR is the cause of the problem I had. Installed in a directory with some 150~250+ games (I'm not going to go back to figure out the exact breaking point), SteamVR seems to cause the client to become slow and almost unresponsive. Why this happens, I don't know. I can however tell you after hours of working on the problem with 2 different PCs, SteamVR, without a doubt was the problem. After moving SteamVR on both PCs to smaller a directory (I moved both of mine to SSDs with no steam games installed) and rebooted, the steam client on both PCs was once again responsive and as it should be.