Downloads slow and entire PC lags

[Tarnished1992]

Let me just start by saying, I have NEVER had any issues with this on Steam before. 2 years ive used this computer with no issues whatsoever. And just randomly, last week whenever i try to download a game from Steam, it gives me about half of my download speed and my entire PC chugs. The part thats even more strange, is it does not show a higher CPU usage than before.....im at a LOSS. I cannot find an answer anywhere. I have not downloaded any new program etc. Epic, Battle.net, even freaking EA is downloading at my normal download speed with no issues. So it has to be an issue with Steam. I have followed ALL the recommended trouble shooting steps on the help page. and nothing works..... HELP!

[ReBoot]

Are you downloading unto an HDD?

[Tarnished1992]

Not used an HDD in almost 9 years haha And that wouldn't explain my entire PC lagging. My OS is installed on a different SSD than my games. However. I fixed the problem...... I used a 3rd party uninstaller and erased everything steam related. Now its just fine. Ive had this issue for weeks and put off doing that bc i really didn't want to have to redownload everything. But sometimes that's what u have to do.... Ugh

[Elucidator]

Windows has added security going over things doing odd stuff on SYSTEM previllage levels
When you init a download through a browser (the regular method), the download is initiated on User level.
Steam has various unusual .. bypasses that can be compared to hacks, such as previllage escalation. That doesn't mean much nowadays since Windows itself has telemetry and ads, acting like trojan addroppers and trojan spyware basically. Stuff virusses used to do get normalized, but anyway--

Because of that Defender and other stuff is on higher alert. Also it doesn't count Steam Downloading as a user activity, but rather as background/service/system stuff. This, coupled with the encryption/decryption Steam does causes an averagely slower download.
(Windows will think "Oh, the user isn't using this so lets pump down its power" basically.

This is also why you need to make adjustments when dealing with USB connected devices and installing steam games on them. Windows will otherwise think the USB device isn't being used basically and shut down power causing a download fail.

Anyway, recently something changed, since more people suffer from issues with downloading. I'm not too sure what. So I'll just leave guesses:

Guess 1: The fact that your entire PC is lagging means that it is probably caused by a windows update. You're part of the bug test. Microsoft pushes unstable updates to people more often unfortunately.
You can check for driver updates for your SSD and processor, and maybe a firmware update for your motherboard. Perhaps that resolves the issue.
(also look for chipset drivers)

Guess 2: It's chromium. It may have to do with chromium stuff gathering all kinds of nonsense on the device till it succeeds and they may or may not share the same directory for collecting data. Perhaps your browser or some other chromium app updated and now it caused an issue with Steam, because of it using an older chromium dataset or file name.
With the uninstall, this folder was cleaned, and so now only Steam's newest files and the browser's newest files are there and no longer mess up with the older files.

Every chromium instance generates the folder: "User Data" somewhere. Usually its in AppData/Local, but it can be in "programdata", appdata/roaming, somewhere in programfiles, even in the windows directory. ... e.e;
This "User Data" folder has the following folders inside:
- BrowserMetrics
- Default
- ShaderCache
- Stability
It also has two files: First Run and Local State.
The thing that I think got messed up and caused your entire system to lag while Steam was running was stuff in the Default folder.

Also, all of this stuff in there is not important and will regenerate every time you launch a chromium application. Feel free to throw it away. Heck, even if you don't it will try to overwrite the files.

[Tarnished1992]

Wow. An actual helpful reply. Thats refreshing. Instead of "have u tried restarting your computer" lmao. I could find nothing specific on how to even begin to fix the issue, other than the usual steam help information. Im somewhat knowledgeable when it comes to software. I checked drivers and such. But if all other game launchers were downloading just fine, i new it had to be a local issue with Steam . Much appreciated for the thorough answer.

[Tarnished1992]

Originally posted by Elucidator:

Windows has added security going over things doing odd stuff on SYSTEM previllage levels
When you init a download through a browser (the regular method), the download is initiated on User level.
Steam has various unusual .. bypasses that can be compared to hacks, such as previllage escalation. That doesn't mean much nowadays since Windows itself has telemetry and ads, acting like trojan addroppers and trojan spyware basically. Stuff virusses used to do get normalized, but anyway--

Because of that Defender and other stuff is on higher alert. Also it doesn't count Steam Downloading as a user activity, but rather as background/service/system stuff. This, coupled with the encryption/decryption Steam does causes an averagely slower download.
(Windows will think "Oh, the user isn't using this so lets pump down its power" basically.

This is also why you need to make adjustments when dealing with USB connected devices and installing steam games on them. Windows will otherwise think the USB device isn't being used basically and shut down power causing a download fail.

Anyway, recently something changed, since more people suffer from issues with downloading. I'm not too sure what. So I'll just leave guesses:

Guess 1: The fact that your entire PC is lagging means that it is probably caused by a windows update. You're part of the bug test. Microsoft pushes unstable updates to people more often unfortunately.
You can check for driver updates for your SSD and processor, and maybe a firmware update for your motherboard. Perhaps that resolves the issue.
(also look for chipset drivers)

Guess 2: It's chromium. It may have to do with chromium stuff gathering all kinds of nonsense on the device till it succeeds and they may or may not share the same directory for collecting data. Perhaps your browser or some other chromium app updated and now it caused an issue with Steam, because of it using an older chromium dataset or file name.
With the uninstall, this folder was cleaned, and so now only Steam's newest files and the browser's newest files are there and no longer mess up with the older files.

Every chromium instance generates the folder: "User Data" somewhere. Usually its in AppData/Local, but it can be in "programdata", appdata/roaming, somewhere in programfiles, even in the windows directory. ... e.e;
This "User Data" folder has the following folders inside:
- BrowserMetrics
- Default
- ShaderCache
- Stability
It also has two files: First Run and Local State.
The thing that I think got messed up and caused your entire system to lag while Steam was running was stuff in the Default folder.

Also, all of this stuff in there is not important and will regenerate every time you launch a chromium application. Feel free to throw it away. Heck, even if you don't it will try to overwrite the files.

Well, the issue randomly returned. And now, my RGB starts to spazz out when steam starts to download games. I reset everything. I reformatted drives and made sure all drivers were up to date. Its still ONLY steam having this issue. Epic, Blizzard, Ubisoft, even EA has no issues. Just STEAM. This is beyond frustrating. And it makes no sense. Bc it has never done with. So it leads me to believe its something to do with a steam update and just the specific hardware i have.

[Satoru]

Note that a steam download has generally 2 parts

1) the HTTP download part. This is not taxing to your CPU at all because its just doing standard HTTP requests to grab data from the internet. Pulling even 1gbps the tcp overhead for this is pretty low

2) the PATCHING part. This is generally where you're going to see performance issues. Patching on steam is extremely CPU and disk IO intensive. If you have a slow spinning disk, this can be very painful depending on the game. Even on SSD, because steam patching is the worst case scenario for drives, you will never see the kinds of theoretical sequential read/write speeds that are advertised.

3) your anti-virus can also interfere with both the download and especially the patching part. Most complaints of 'slow' download speeds are due to their anti-virus somehow thinking every packet is a hidden trojan or something so it keeps trying to scan everything. Add whitelisting in your anti-virus so it doesn't tank your disk performance.

4) There are some 'gaming' network cards that are what can only be described as hot garbage. their networking stack is so bad it makes things worse overall. If you have this kind of "Killer" network card or its ilk, ensure you utterly totally rip out all their drivers and QOS software as it will absolutely make your computer worse