[FIXED] Steam Slow Download Problem fixed by uninstalling Razer surround

[bernardy]

So I was having download speed problems with Steam on a Windows 7 computer with nVidia nForce networking. I have a 100 Mbit/sec download cable internet connection, and I was having the pattern of Steam downloads peaking at about 1 MByte/sec then gradually slowing down to under 100KByte/sec for minutes/hours, then spiking back up to that 1MByte/sec and repeating the gradual slowdown. Speedtest was showing that I was getting about 80Mbit/sec effective download speed in the browser, so there was apparently something that was interfering with Steam downloads only.

I tried to change the download region to various other US cities and international regions, but changing regions didn't fix this problem.

I have also uninstalled the original nVidia Network Access Manager software which was listed as conflicting software, but that did not fix the problem either.

Running in Windows 7 safe mode w/networking showed that I could get 10Mbytes/sec download speed in Steam. So this pointed to a problem with one of the services or startup programs.

So I finally bit the bullet and did the tedious process of disabling all services and start up programs and re-enabling each service and startup program one at a time,
as described here, in order to identify which service could be the culprit.

The culprit turned out to be the Razer Surround Service and Razer Monitor startup program, which apparently was installed by the Steam version of Wasteland 2. (in my case).

I have no idea why Razer Surround Service (which is apparently a software surround sound driver for headphones) would interfere with Steam downloads (possibly a TCP port conflict, but then why would the Razer Surround Service need to actively monitor a TCP port?), but uninstalling all Razer related software (using Windows Control Panel Programs and Features uninstall) fixed my Steam slow download problem entirely.

A brief internet search did not turn up any other mentions of this software combination being a problem, so I'm posting this as another data point, in hopes of helping someone else with the same problem with Steam downloads.

[JeTOöOT]

same problem. but i uninstalled razer surround but the problem still persist.