Steam installations are extremely slow but internet speed is fast.

[Daily Hot n Ready]

This has been a persistent problem off and on on my computer for the past 4 or so years. It will be a problem for a handful of months then suddenly not be a problem for a handful of months.

This cuases even minor updates to take upwards of an hour, and makes intalling any large game downright impossible. It also affects the ability for any other process to access any of my disks, greatly slowing my computer as a whole. If i need my computer for anything but listening to music, I have to completely shut down steam just in case it starts trying to downlad something and freezes while doing work. However, it never takes up a significant portion of my read/write capacity.

This only happens with steam. No other program that downloads large files has a remotely similar issue.

I've troubleshooted a number of posible cuases already:

• I have both SSD's and HDD's, and my OS is on an SSD, and this effects all disks the same. It doesn't matter how much disk space is left on any disk. It happens on a near empty disk the same as a pretty full one. Main SSD has plenty of space.
  
  
• I reparied my disk multiple times. If its a disk issue, its not something windows's automated repairs will fix.
  
  
• Internet speed is fast. Speed tests give me about 90 Mbps down and steam peaks at 11 MB/s.
  
  
• Steam cache has been cleared. Multiple times. Never helped.
  
  
• I have reinstalled steam multiple times. The first time I did it, it seemed to work for a few months, but I have tried several times since and it hasn't helped.
  
  
• I have used both the stable and the beta releases of steam. Same problem both ways.
  
• 
  Steam is added as an exlucsion for windows defender. I have even entirely turned winows defender off as a test and it didn;t help at all. I don't have any third party antivirus software installed.
  
  
• This is a 7 year old PC and I have not been extremely scruplulous in the past over what programs I installed, so it is possible that there is something on my system fighting steam, but I have not found any sources as to what that might be, and it doesn't explain why sometimes its a problem and sometimes its not. One archived thread i found had someone mentioning in response to a similar problem that "crapware" could be a the culprit, though they didn't give any helpful advice as to what that might be or how to find out.

My suspicion is that the problem has something to do with Steam's decrompression process. While the slow disk writing appears to be waht is stopping the downlad from proceeding, the slow writing will continue a tthe same pace once all the compressed files are downlaoded to my disk.

Or, it could be a problem with registries, but honestly I have absolutely no clue how windows registries work so IDK on that front.

I have seen a handful of posts complaining of similar issues, so it seems I'm not alone but it does seem to be pretty rare, and there are no good solutions on any of those threads. They usualy just get told the standard stuff: clear your cache, reinstall steam, check your disk, greenlight steam, etc.

Thank you for any help you can give.

[Cathulhu]

11MB or 90MBit, it's pretty much the same.

And your assumption is correct. Downloads are compressed and encrypted, so if your system lacks IO power in handling such data, you get performance issues.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Daily Hot n Ready:

• Internet speed is fast. Speed tests give me about 90 Mbps down and steam peaks at 11 MB/s.

Steam defaults to MB/s. Start with...

Steam > Settings > Downloads >>> Display download rates in bits per second

[Daily Hot n Ready]

Diposting pertama kali oleh cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Daily Hot n Ready:

• Internet speed is fast. Speed tests give me about 90 Mbps down and steam peaks at 11 MB/s.

Steam defaults to MB/s. Start with...

Steam > Settings > Downloads >>> Display download rates in bits per second

:qr:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Cathulhu:

11MB or 90MBit, it's pretty much the same.

And your assumption is correct. Downloads are compressed and encrypted, so if your system lacks IO power in handling such data, you get performance issues.

.......


......

I know the difference between Mbps and MB/s........

And i know that steam compresses files....... I also specificly said that the issue is not my system's read/write speed or prcoessing speed........

.........

[Cathulhu]

No one said it is. I explicitly said IO.

[Daily Hot n Ready]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Cathulhu:

No one said it is. I explicitly said IO.

Its not a problem with my system's speed. I don't know how much more explicit I can get.

[Resident Princess]

Try to like test which like hours are best to like download your gamesfor me that was like literally all I had to do. 1GB internet means nothing if there’s way to much steam traffic at certain times mostly nights entire games like 90GB or more dl in mere minutes as to over an hour during the dayGL

[Cathulhu]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Daily Hot n Ready:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Cathulhu:

No one said it is. I explicitly said IO.

Its not a problem with my system's speed. I don't know how much more explicit I can get.

If you refuse to accept advice from others, why even create this thread?

[13ushwacker]

Your system is 7 years old. Software, hardware, and the conventions that make it all work together have evolved tremendously over time. Much of that evolution has to do with speeding up the handling of the massive amounts of information being passed over ISP networks. Just think of all the imagery and video eating up bandwidth and how that would require ISP's to upgrade hardware, and software, to handle it.
Software tends to follow the hardware state-of-the-art. So, from the get go, your system is at a disadvantage compared to newer systems. At that age your system is probably only capable of passing half the bandwidth, internal-on-the-motherboard, [ between memory, data storage and the processor] that a new system's is capable of. Much of the speed improvements of these last years has not come from faster processors, memory, etc. but from doubling the bandwidth available on the motherboard itself. So for comparison, if your system is a 32 bit system, it will have to work twice as hard as a new system just to move data from memory to the processor and back again - for the same amount of data over the same amount of time. This is why operating systems made a jump from 32bits to 64bits. And it may lack hardware, within the CPU, which Steam's software uses to speed up the decryption and decompression which might now exist within newer CPU's - that's just a guess but I think a likely one. If this is the case the STEAM software has no choice but to fall back on older algorithms that make use of older hardware abilities and these are going to be slower. If your operating system is 32bit instead of 64bit the situation of motherboard internal bandwidth is true. So each and every operation is going to take twice as long to move data back and forth between processor and storage as the Steam algorithms prepare the transmitted information for use - if it is old enough to be a 32 bit system. Those little clock ticks add up and moving data takes time and bandwidth just on the motherboard itself. It all adds up.
To help you can manage the downloads and preparation phases, not letting them occur when the computer is busy or only happen when you manually approve them. You would then have to dedicate specific times for the download, and data preparation phases.
No matter what your numbers say, older hardware cannot take advantage of newer, probably faster software because the capability doesn't exist in the chipset(s). If your system uses a 32bit operating system it will take more time to do anything than an equivalent 64 bit system. There is also the possibility your ISP is throttling your downloads so they don't eat up bandwidth beyond a certain point. It is a rare thing when a user gets use of the full bandwidth the ISP advertises. ISP's who use satellites, like phone companies, are strictly limited by the satellite's bandwidth and overall capability. After all - by the time a satellite goes from idea to hardware in space - it is already out of the state of the art. I would chalk it up to the age of the system and the bandwidth available on the motherboard and between the system components like hard drives, SSDs, RAM, the CPU. In the computer world 7 years is pretty ancient. It is probably past time for a new system.
Another thing to consider is that game data files are getting bigger and bigger because of greater image resolution available, larger maps for the characters and so on. This is allowed because newer hardware has the capability to handle it in a timely manner. A system the age of yours is going to run into significant challenges dealing with new games, or just running them, at high resolutions and finer fidelity graphics. Time to upgrade.

[Daily Hot n Ready]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Cathulhu:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Daily Hot n Ready:

Its not a problem with my system's speed. I don't know how much more explicit I can get.

If you refuse to accept advice from others, why even create this thread?

You aren't giving advice, you didn't even read my post, suggested something I already said I controlled for, tried acting condescending and got mad when i told I already tried that.

[Daily Hot n Ready]

Diposting pertama kali oleh 13ushwacker:

Your system is 7 years old. Software, hardware, and the conventions that make it all work together have evolved tremendously over time. Much of that evolution has to do with speeding up the handling of the massive amounts of information being passed over ISP networks. Just think of all the imagery and video eating up bandwidth and how that would require ISP's to upgrade hardware, and software, to handle it.
Software tends to follow the hardware state-of-the-art. So, from the get go, your system is at a disadvantage compared to newer systems. At that age your system is probably only capable of passing half the bandwidth, internal-on-the-motherboard, [ between memory, data storage and the processor] that a new system's is capable of. Much of the speed improvements of these last years has not come from faster processors, memory, etc. but from doubling the bandwidth available on the motherboard itself. So for comparison, if your system is a 32 bit system, it will have to work twice as hard as a new system just to move data from memory to the processor and back again - for the same amount of data over the same amount of time. This is why operating systems made a jump from 32bits to 64bits. And it may lack hardware, within the CPU, which Steam's software uses to speed up the decryption and decompression which might now exist within newer CPU's - that's just a guess but I think a likely one. If this is the case the STEAM software has no choice but to fall back on older algorithms that make use of older hardware abilities and these are going to be slower. If your operating system is 32bit instead of 64bit the situation of motherboard internal bandwidth is true. So each and every operation is going to take twice as long to move data back and forth between processor and storage as the Steam algorithms prepare the transmitted information for use - if it is old enough to be a 32 bit system. Those little clock ticks add up and moving data takes time and bandwidth just on the motherboard itself. It all adds up.
To help you can manage the downloads and preparation phases, not letting them occur when the computer is busy or only happen when you manually approve them. You would then have to dedicate specific times for the download, and data preparation phases.
No matter what your numbers say, older hardware cannot take advantage of newer, probably faster software because the capability doesn't exist in the chipset(s). If your system uses a 32bit operating system it will take more time to do anything than an equivalent 64 bit system. There is also the possibility your ISP is throttling your downloads so they don't eat up bandwidth beyond a certain point. It is a rare thing when a user gets use of the full bandwidth the ISP advertises. ISP's who use satellites, like phone companies, are strictly limited by the satellite's bandwidth and overall capability. After all - by the time a satellite goes from idea to hardware in space - it is already out of the state of the art. I would chalk it up to the age of the system and the bandwidth available on the motherboard and between the system components like hard drives, SSDs, RAM, the CPU. In the computer world 7 years is pretty ancient. It is probably past time for a new system.
Another thing to consider is that game data files are getting bigger and bigger because of greater image resolution available, larger maps for the characters and so on. This is allowed because newer hardware has the capability to handle it in a timely manner. A system the age of yours is going to run into significant challenges dealing with new games, or just running them, at high resolutions and finer fidelity graphics. Time to upgrade.

This was happening when the system was pretty new, too. Like I said, its been happening for years.

And again, this ONLY happens with steam, and is not being caused by hardware bottlenecks in processing or read/write speeds.

And no, my system is 64 bit. Were they even making 32 bit systems in 2016???

Its a problem specific this computer and this computer only. Its characteristic of a specific bug in the software or a specific interaction between two pieces of software.

I said its not the internet. My actaul DL speed from stem is 11MB/s. Its not the downloading part that the issue. Its the installing part.



Look, I appreciate trying to help, but if you aren't even going to read my request before posting, why post at all?

[Daily Hot n Ready]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Resident Princess:

Try to like test which like hours are best to like download your games:MOBIUSFF_Mog:for me that was like literally all I had to do. 1GB internet means nothing if there’s way to much steam traffic at certain times mostly nights entire games like 90GB or more dl in mere minutes as to over an hour during the day:SophiaYandere:GL:Aiheihei:

Its not the internet thats the problem. Download speeds are fine. The bottleneck is entirely about decompression/installation.

[13ushwacker]

It isn't polite to bite and snap at the people trying to help. Plus my post was 95 percent about your computer. Though I doubt you are getting the speed you think you are getting.

I have no problem with Steam, downloading and installing games, etc. with either my old computer or the now 2 yr old one I use now. In fact it's pretty quick. And the bandwidth you quote as your ISP's max bandwidth is not all that good.

And I don't care what your system is, if it is indeed 7 yrs old its time to replace it or face problems like this. Games are very complicated pieces of software and contain a ton of data. So whether running the game itself anywhere near max settings or processing the transfer files into usable form they will be more challenging in most cases than say business software - speaking in general terms.

Progress marches on and software with it. The hardware must march also or you have problems. If you say you had problems from the start well, you can only expect those to get worse. You are bottle-necked somewhere or something on the computer itself is choking performance. My guess is it is a combo of not very good bandwidth going, from the figures you quoted, and performance issues with your PC that should have been looked into as soon as issues arose. Since 2023 - 7 is 2016 I would say my guess wasn't a bad one.

If you want specific solutions then your questions must be much more specific - based on good, actual troubleshooting. Suggest you do some troubleshooting on your own before you start asking for help so you can ask a pertinent question. I greatly doubt the problem is Steam's. I've seen no problems with Steam on a variety of different PCs and different ISPs over the years. I'm beginning to think from the way you have treated every single person who tried to help you that you are actually trolling and I am considering reporting this post.

[Daily Hot n Ready]

Diposting pertama kali oleh 13ushwacker:

It isn't polite to bite and snap at the people trying to help. Plus my post was 95 percent about your computer. Though I doubt you are getting the speed you think you are getting.

I have no problem with Steam, downloading and installing games, etc. with either my old computer or the now 2 yr old one I use now. In fact it's pretty quick. And the bandwidth you quote as your ISP's max bandwidth is not all that good.

And I don't care what your system is, if it is indeed 7 yrs old its time to replace it or face problems like this. Games are very complicated pieces of software and contain a ton of data. So whether running the game itself anywhere near max settings or processing the transfer files into usable form they will be more challenging in most cases than say business software - speaking in general terms.

Progress marches on and software with it. The hardware must march also or you have problems. If you say you had problems from the start well, you can only expect those to get worse. You are bottle-necked somewhere or something on the computer itself is choking performance. My guess is it is a combo of not very good bandwidth going, from the figures you quoted, and performance issues with your PC that should have been looked into as soon as issues arose. Since 2023 - 7 is 2016 I would say my guess wasn't a bad one.

If you want specific solutions then your questions must be much more specific - based on good, actual troubleshooting. Suggest you do some troubleshooting on your own before you start asking for help so you can ask a pertinent question. I greatly doubt the problem is Steam's. I've seen no problems with Steam on a variety of different PCs and different ISPs over the years. I'm beginning to think from the way you have treated every single person who tried to help you that you are actually trolling and I am considering reporting this post.

My freind.

"I've troubleshooted a number of posible cuases already:

• I have both SSD's and HDD's, and my OS is on an SSD, and this effects all disks the same. It doesn't matter how much disk space is left on any disk. It happens on a near empty disk the same as a pretty full one. Main SSD has plenty of space.
  
  
• I reparied my disk multiple times. If its a disk issue, its not something windows's automated repairs will fix.
  
  
• Internet speed is fast. Speed tests give me about 90 Mbps down and steam peaks at 11 MB/s.
  
  
• Steam cache has been cleared. Multiple times. Never helped.
  
  
• I have reinstalled steam multiple times. The first time I did it, it seemed to work for a few months, but I have tried several times since and it hasn't helped.
  
  
• I have used both the stable and the beta releases of steam. Same problem both ways.
  
  
• Steam is added as an exclusion for windows defender. I have even entirely turned windows defender off as a test and it didn't help at all. I don't have any third party antivirus software installed.
  
  
• This is a 7 year old PC and I have not been extremely scrupulous in the past over what programs I installed, so it is possible that there is something on my system fighting steam, but I have not found any sources as to what that might be, and it doesn't explain why sometimes its a problem and sometimes its not. One archived thread i found had someone mentioning in response to a similar problem that "crapware" could be a the culprit, though they didn't give any helpful advice as to what that might be or how to find out."

And vaguely telling someone that their system must just be too old and claiming i'm lying about my download speeds, when i have proven that my internet is not the bottleneck, is not helping. I have tested my hardware extensively, 7 years is not nearly long enough for there to be critical backwards compatibility issues in the software, especially on windows.

If I'm being rude its because you aren't listening to what I'm actually saying. You are just accusing me of trolling.

And no, at first all of my replies were just confirming that those are things I controlled for, then you and cathulu over there decided to get offended at that.

The fact that this only happens with steam and only happens on a handful of systems points towards there being a rare hardware related bug with steam or rare conflict between steam and another program. I'm trying to get actual, useful info on what that might be, not some self righteous condescension from people telling me stuff i explicitly said I already tried then getting mad at me for it.

[Cathulhu]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Daily Hot n Ready:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Cathulhu:

If you refuse to accept advice from others, why even create this thread?

You aren't giving advice, you didn't even read my post, suggested something I already said I controlled for, tried acting condescending and got mad when i told I already tried that.

Where did you address the topic of IO? I see no indicator prior to or after i wrote about it.

[Daily Hot n Ready]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Cathulhu:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Daily Hot n Ready:

You aren't giving advice, you didn't even read my post, suggested something I already said I controlled for, tried acting condescending and got mad when i told I already tried that.

Where did you address the topic of IO? I see no indicator prior to or after i wrote about it.

The part where I explicitly told you that i have controlled for any single SSD or HDD being the culprit, the part where I told you it happens the same on every disk regardless of storage pressure, the part where I told you that this is an issue exclusive to Steam and no other program, the part where I told you that i have monitored my disk operations and they are under a completely insignificant amount of stress during steam installations.

You are not interested in helping you just don;t want top be wrong about some petty nonsense. Is there a way to block people from replying on your threads?