Longer Steam Loading Times?

[Rambo3456]

for some reason steam apps have been taking a little longer to look they used to lo0ad in about 3-5secs no they are taking 13-15 secs to load does anyone know why this is also its only steam games nothing else 

[VerticalDiscussions]

Hard drive fragmentation perhaps?

[Rambo3456]

Just now, VerticalDiscussions said:

Hard drive fragmentation perhaps?

i would do it but i had problems in the past with fragmenters taken over 1 days just to defrag 1% of my hard drive 

[VerticalDiscussions]

Just now, AddisonHawke said:

-snip-

You mean like the defraggler? But 3-5 secs load times, that sounds SSD speeds. So your steam games are all on an SSD?

[Rambo3456]

Just now, VerticalDiscussions said:

You mean like the defraggler? But 3-5 secs load times, that sounds SSD speeds. So your steam games are all on an SSD?

 

everything is on a single 2tb hdd

[VerticalDiscussions]

6 minutes ago, AddisonHawke said:

-snip-

You checked if the drive is constantly at 100% load? 

[Rambo3456]

1 minute ago, VerticalDiscussions said:

You checked if the drive is constantly at 100% load? 

yes when i ran the game it was at 4% load

 

[VerticalDiscussions]

1 minute ago, AddisonHawke said:

-snip-

Then its pretty weird that your performance of the drive degraded so highly. Did you check its thermals using Speccy for ex?

[Rambo3456]

Just now, VerticalDiscussions said:

Then its pretty weird that your performance of the drive degraded so highly. Did you check its thermals using Speccy for ex?

its running at 40 C at all times

 

[Rambo3456]

Actually something weird happend i just launched a game in steam library tab instead of desktop icons and that ran fine but the desktops icons take longer

[Squirrel724]

23 hours ago, AddisonHawke said:

Actually something weird happend i just launched a game in steam library tab instead of desktop icons and that ran fine but the desktops icons take longer

Was steam already running when you tried to launch from the desktop icon? If not it has to start Steam before it can start the game.

[Rambo3456]

3 hours ago, Squirrel724 said:

Was steam already running when you tried to launch from the desktop icon? If not it has to start Steam before it can start the game.

Steam was running

[BlueThroat]

Hey there,

 

Important note: I believe your HDD is fine. So don't sweat  

 

Just as a heads up, I hope you've partitioned your HDD to keep your OS install, application installs & data storage all separate? This helps in HDD performance and life span.

 

I'm just speculating here that you are on Windows 7? But either way this is a hindrance in any version of Windows because of how steam app shortcuts are handled.

 

For more info, please read the explanation before asking follow up questions.

 

TLDR:

 

Shortcuts load slower as they have to fulfill more conditions than directly launching from within steam. Hence the extra 5 secs in application load times.

 

Explanation:

 

When you create a desktop shortcut for an app that was installed through Steam, the shortcut always prompts to launch Steam.exe first. This is because the actual .exe files for the apps are conditioned to run via Steam's framework & file directories and not on their own (as DRM protection).

 

Thus, when you launch a steam app from a desktop shortcut, it takes longer because it has to go through this process:

 

Double click shortcut-> check if Steam is running-> confirm Steam login-> prompt Steam to execute app-> Steam checks if online mode is required for app-> Steam executes app from within it's file directory

 

In a normal DRM free desktop shortcut, the process is much simpler (as long as you are logged in as windows admin, which would entail a UAC prompt):

 

Double click shortcut-> execute app in file directory

 

When you open an app from within Steam itself, you are skipping a lot of the verification steps that the desktop shortcut needs to perform:

 

Click 'play' or 'open'-> steam checks if online mode is required for app-> Steam executes app from within it's directory

 

The common argument here is that sometimes shortcuts are also just as fast as opening the app from within Steam itself then why the sudden slow down? 

 

This happens because of 2 reasons:

 

1. Windows indexes commonly used shortcuts for faster app loading therefore remembering that the verification for these shortcuts has already been done in a previous attempt. This information however is wiped every time you Shut Down or Restart the OS ('fast startup' in Windows 10 eliminates this issue until a cold boot is performed).

 

2. Some HDDs also cache commonly accessed data including shortcuts which decreases load times. This cache can also be wiped or overwritten when other files seem to take higher access priority OR windows re-indexes the drive OR a disk defragment is performed (complete or incomplete) OR the drive is formatted.

 

Eventually as you keep using shortcuts, their use frequency will increase & windows or your HDD will start to remember them (index or cache them) for faster load times.

 

Otherwise, just open them from Steam.

 

Hope this helps 

 

Feel free to ask more questions.

[Rambo3456]

On 9/8/2016 at 11:56 PM, BlueThroat said:

Hey there,

 

Important note: I believe your HDD is fine. So don't sweat  

 

Just as a heads up, I hope you've partitioned your HDD to keep your OS install, application installs & data storage all separate? This helps in HDD performance and life span.

 

I'm just speculating here that you are on Windows 7? But either way this is a hindrance in any version of Windows because of how steam app shortcuts are handled.

 

For more info, please read the explanation before asking follow up questions.

 

TLDR:

 

Shortcuts load slower as they have to fulfill more conditions than directly launching from within steam. Hence the extra 5 secs in application load times.

 

Explanation:

 

When you create a desktop shortcut for an app that was installed through Steam, the shortcut always prompts to launch Steam.exe first. This is because the actual .exe files for the apps are conditioned to run via Steam's framework & file directories and not on their own (as DRM protection).

 

Thus, when you launch a steam app from a desktop shortcut, it takes longer because it has to go through this process:

 

Double click shortcut-> check if Steam is running-> confirm Steam login-> prompt Steam to execute app-> Steam checks if online mode is required for app-> Steam executes app from within it's file directory

 

In a normal DRM free desktop shortcut, the process is much simpler (as long as you are logged in as windows admin, which would entail a UAC prompt):

 

Double click shortcut-> execute app in file directory

 

When you open an app from within Steam itself, you are skipping a lot of the verification steps that the desktop shortcut needs to perform:

 

Click 'play' or 'open'-> steam checks if online mode is required for app-> Steam executes app from within it's directory

 

The common argument here is that sometimes shortcuts are also just as fast as opening the app from within Steam itself then why the sudden slow down? 

 

This happens because of 2 reasons:

 

1. Windows indexes commonly used shortcuts for faster app loading therefore remembering that the verification for these shortcuts has already been done in a previous attempt. This information however is wiped every time you Shut Down or Restart the OS ('fast startup' in Windows 10 eliminates this issue until a cold boot is performed).

 

2. Some HDDs also cache commonly accessed data including shortcuts which decreases load times. This cache can also be wiped or overwritten when other files seem to take higher access priority OR windows re-indexes the drive OR a disk defragment is performed (complete or incomplete) OR the drive is formatted.

 

Eventually as you keep using shortcuts, their use frequency will increase & windows or your HDD will start to remember them (index or cache them) for faster load times.

 

Otherwise, just open them from Steam.

 

Hope this helps 

 

Feel free to ask more questions.

Thank you very much for the info i have giving it a couple days just launching it through steam and i just desides to try to make shortcuts again and i seems to be working thank you for the help