Steam downloads causing my computer to act strangely

[EimaJ_]

Hello,

 

I am having issues with downloading games on steam and I'm not sure whether steam is the issue or whether failing hardware is the culprit.

I am currently trying to install Skyrim on my computer through steam and it's not going particularly well. 

 

The download will start as normal, and work for maybe 5 mins getting the download from 5.9GB up to 6.3GB. It will then begin to behave like this. 

 

If I pause the download for any reason, any progress that has been made will revert, going from 6.3GB back down to 5.9GB.

 

On top of this, during the download my computer will begin to act extremely strangely. Applications will take much longer to launch and stop responding for 10-20 seconds if I click on different tabs within those applications. I contacted steam support and they said it would most likely be hardware failure - by this I expected it would be my HDD that is failing but both the error checking tool and CrystalDiskInfo claim my HDD is fine. 

 

I have no idea what to do, so any help would be much appreciated. 

[EimaJ_]

CPU fluctuates between 10-18%, but HDD is flat out 100%. I did wonder whether the utilization of my HDD would be causing apps stored on the HDD to be slower, but it affects apps stored on my SSD too which isn't being utilized.

[EimaJ_]

Its now decided to act in a completely different way.

 

It has ramped down to literally 0b/s and is now just not doing anything while steam says the download is still in progress.

[Likwid]

29 minutes ago, EimaJ_ said:

CPU fluctuates between 10-18%, but HDD is flat out 100%. I did wonder whether the utilization of my HDD would be causing apps stored on the HDD to be slower, but it affects apps stored on my SSD too which isn't being utilized.

How full are those drives.

Btw I moved to SSD only storage (prices now are insame) because some cache would still be stored on HDD

[EimaJ_]

3 minutes ago, Likwid said:

How full are those drives.

Btw I moved to SSD only storage (prices now are insame) because some cache would still be stored on HDD

 

my drives are pretty full but not to the point that they wouldn't be able to hold skyrim

 

[egriff79]

I think its something with Steam the same thing happens to me when I update the last of us what happens to me does not sound exactly like what's happening to you but close after I start the download it goes fine for a couple of minutes then download speed just drops to almost nothing as disk usage drops to almost nothing then shoots back up to maybe 10-15 MBS just to do the same thing again, which makes a 25 gig download that should take 10 mins 3 hours. I get constant 60MPS on any other download Xbox, Ubisoft, EA... just on Steam, it happens to me.

[EimaJ_]

3 minutes ago, egriff79 said:

I think its something with Steam the same thing happens to me when I update the last of us what happens to me does not sound exactly like what's happening to you but close after I start the download it goes fine for a couple of minutes then download speed just drops to almost nothing as disk usage drops to almost nothing then shoots back up to maybe 10-15 MBS just to do the same thing again, which makes a 25 gig download that should take 10 mins 3 hours. I get constant 60MPS on any other download Xbox, Ubisoft, EA... just on Steam, it happens to me.

yeah it's super weird, at this point im not sure whether to leave it and just hope that it finishes downloading after an extended period of time or whether i should cancel the download and try it again on my SSD to see if it makes any difference.

[FrowningHippo]

This seems like normal behavior from steam to me. The Skyrim files you are downloading are compressed. The decompression takes time and writespeed from the HDD. If your writespeed is maxed out and needs to decompress files. Steam will stop downloading, because there is no room to write the new data. The disk is fully utilized for unpacking after all. 

 

This mostly happens if you're downloadspeed is decent/good. 

 

Windows should become laggy as well at this point. Even when it's installed on another drive. This is because the Windows filesystem still uses the HDD even if you're not using anything actively. And as such, Windows chugs to a stuttery mess.

 

You can fix this issue by getting a faster drive. Or limiting downloadspeeds in Steam.

[EimaJ_]

1 hour ago, FrowningHippo said:

This seems like normal behavior from steam to me. The Skyrim files you are downloading are compressed. The decompression takes time and writespeed from the HDD. If your writespeed is maxed out and needs to decompress files. Steam will stop downloading, because there is no room to write the new data. The disk is fully utilized for unpacking after all. 

 

This mostly happens if you're downloadspeed is decent/good. 

 

Windows should become laggy as well at this point. Even when it's installed on another drive. This is because the Windows filesystem still uses the HDD even if you're not using anything actively. And as such, Windows chugs to a stuttery mess.

 

You can fix this issue by getting a faster drive. Or limiting downloadspeeds in Steam.

yeah you're probably right, was just a little confused because it has never happened before but what you say makes sense. 

Thanks for your response.