So something on my system must be seriously hosed. Everything was working fine yesterday and I was able to play TF2, but today nothing is working. TF2, Portal, they all launch but then they all lockup and lag continuously. Each one works for about 5-10 seconds and then it locks up for 20-30. This just happens over and over again. As soon as it corrects itself and lets me play for a few seconds (and I think it's over), the games lockup again.
I first noticed this in Linux today and I couldn't figure it out so I rebooted into Windows. I launched the game and got the same problem, which led me to believe it must be a hardware issue. No way 2 separate instances of Steam suddenly became corrupt. I had no power surge or anything...everything was running fine yesterday, I closed Steam, and when I tried to open it again this morning it just didn't work. I didn't change any video drivers or anything. In fact, since exiting Steam yesterday I haven't even touched my computer. I was gone all day and used my laptop to check email when I got home last night. The desktop system has not been touched or changed in any way.
So I took compressed air and cleaned out my case. I stuck a large floor fan in front of my case with the side panel removed, and I downloaded a program called "speedfan" to monitor the temperature of things inside my case. It's not getting hotter than about 55 degrees celsius and that was only the GPU. With the floor fan on it, it will stay about 49-52 degrees. All other temps are in the 30 and 40 degree range...definitely acceptable.
Still, it's not working. I took a video to show you what I'm talking about (if you right-click and save it you will likely get MUCH better download speeds):
http://slackbox.homelinux.org/tf2-problem.wmv
If you watch the video you will also notice when I alt+tab out of the game that hl2.exe is only using about 27% of the CPU on the system, and I still have 830+ MB of my 2GB of RAM free. So if the CPU isn't pegged, there is plenty of RAM free, and I haven't touched the system since it was running yesterday...ANY clue what on earth this could be? The only thing I can think of is that some hardware (maybe my graphics card?) is failing in my system.
FYI, I tested this on my laptop and was able to play for several minutes without issue so I can only assume that is working. I tried completely uninstalling and reinstalling steam on my desktop system and it still fails after the reinstall. I think I'm going to go run memtest86 just to make sure.
I first noticed this in Linux today and I couldn't figure it out so I rebooted into Windows. I launched the game and got the same problem, which led me to believe it must be a hardware issue. No way 2 separate instances of Steam suddenly became corrupt. I had no power surge or anything...everything was running fine yesterday, I closed Steam, and when I tried to open it again this morning it just didn't work. I didn't change any video drivers or anything. In fact, since exiting Steam yesterday I haven't even touched my computer. I was gone all day and used my laptop to check email when I got home last night. The desktop system has not been touched or changed in any way.
So I took compressed air and cleaned out my case. I stuck a large floor fan in front of my case with the side panel removed, and I downloaded a program called "speedfan" to monitor the temperature of things inside my case. It's not getting hotter than about 55 degrees celsius and that was only the GPU. With the floor fan on it, it will stay about 49-52 degrees. All other temps are in the 30 and 40 degree range...definitely acceptable.
Still, it's not working. I took a video to show you what I'm talking about (if you right-click and save it you will likely get MUCH better download speeds):
http://slackbox.homelinux.org/tf2-problem.wmv
If you watch the video you will also notice when I alt+tab out of the game that hl2.exe is only using about 27% of the CPU on the system, and I still have 830+ MB of my 2GB of RAM free. So if the CPU isn't pegged, there is plenty of RAM free, and I haven't touched the system since it was running yesterday...ANY clue what on earth this could be? The only thing I can think of is that some hardware (maybe my graphics card?) is failing in my system.
FYI, I tested this on my laptop and was able to play for several minutes without issue so I can only assume that is working. I tried completely uninstalling and reinstalling steam on my desktop system and it still fails after the reinstall. I think I'm going to go run memtest86 just to make sure.
