Get this... The otherday I loaded up half life 2 and it took ages to load and ran very slowly, low fames per second - unplayable. So to then I tried counter strike source and it was running ok, but the next few times I loaded it it was running slower and slower, until it too became unplayable - suggesting its a problem with steam. [to make sure it wasnt all games i tried GTA:SA, and that has been running great, as it always has] The thing is, I have been running both CS:S and HL2 on 1024x768, High graphics settings (no AA) for quite sometime, very hapily. So why is it one day it decides to run crap? I ran the video stress test in CS:S and it comes back at around 6 FPS!!! -even with the graphics turned down. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling all of steam/hl2/cs:s and there is no change whatsoever. I have the latest GFX drivers for my card and havent installed/changed anything to my knowledge that would conflict with steam. -PLEASE HELP- ps. Ive noticed that steam uses about 40-50mb of ram when its idle. I think this is normal, but just thought i'd mention it. Athlon XP 3000+ 1GB DDR 2700 MSI KT4AV MotherBorad GeForce FX5200 128mb Fast-Eddie

Are you using OpenGL or Direct X ? try changing between them... also, try re-installing the detonator driver (for graphics card) computing.net rocks

i disagree that steam at idle uses 40 mb it uses 7mb(6,600k approx).First of all u want to clean ur hard drive do a disk clean up,virus scan,defrag,remove all adware and check ur hard drive for errors.If you havnt changed any settings to ur computer its more likely to be something like a virus or adware that you have picked up. Presscot 2.5g @ 533/133 2x256mb Samsung Pny geforce 6 6600 GT 40gb seagate HDD i845GE

cheers Amir Ive tried reinstalling the gfx drivers - no change I didnt know you could change between opengl and directX on HL2...how do you do it? -- phil, steam uses over 20mb memory when i first load it, and after ive run a game - then exited, it uses over 40mb when idle. Ive seen in other forums people have been slating it for using bags of memory, but i will try a defrag/scan/etc and see what happens... cheers Fast-Eddie

Defragging, etc did nothing Steam still uses over 40mb memory but after defrag it says: Fragments File Size Files that cannot be defragmented 823 841 MB \Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\half-life 2 content.gcf 2,088 1.02 GB \Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\source materials.gcf and just for good measure i analysed the hdd again, this is what i got: Volume HDD (C:) Volume size = 37.27 GB Cluster size = 4 KB Used space = 29.67 GB Free space = 7.59 GB Percent free space = 20 % Volume fragmentation Total fragmentation = 9 % File fragmentation = 18 % Free space fragmentation = 0 % File fragmentation Total files = 129,037 Average file size = 292 KB Total fragmented files = 5 Total excess fragments = 3,401 Average fragments per file = 1.02 Pagefile fragmentation Pagefile size = 1.50 GB Total fragments = 15 Folder fragmentation Total folders = 5,389 Fragmented folders = 1 Excess folder fragments = 0 Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation Total MFT size = 157 MB MFT record count = 134,836 Percent MFT in use = 83 % Total MFT fragments = 3 ---------------------- Fragments File Size Most fragmented files 2,088 1.02 GB \Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\source materials.gcf 823 841 MB \Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\half-life 2 content.gcf 453 976 MB \Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\source sounds.gcf 27 1.20 GB \Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\counter-strike source shared.gcf and the steam files are the ones i WANT to defrag! grrr... Fast-Eddie

I have the same prob, and i thougt by changing videcard it will help, i made scan, defrag and cleanup the hole harddisk, no changes at all... Plz help anyone..

Hey guys found the solution for the prob. here is the link, wally here explain it better. http://www.gamearena.com.au/messageboards/latest/thread.php/3270461