Anyway to speed up Steam?

I noticed that when exiting L4D2 my computer really slows to a grind for a short period so its annoying if you have instant messages ready to read or something.

If you try to close steam it says close the application first even though I've exited the game.

Also its incredibly slow if you alt tab during a game unlike Mass Effect 2 which returns almost instantly.

Is there anyway to fix this stuff?

Get a faster computer? Ive never had a problem with Steam being slow, but then again I have a higher than average computer.Iantheone

You could try running the game in a borderless window, so that your computer doesn't have to make transitions into and out of fullscreen mode. I do this and it makes ALT+TAB'ing instantaneous with no downsides. To do this, go to your Games tab, then right-click on Left 4 Dead 2, then click Properties. Next, click the button that says "Set launch options", then type in the following:

-windowed -noborder

Bonus tip: also add the launch option -novid to skip the intro videos when starting up the game. Convenient.

[QUOTE="Iantheone"]Get a faster computer? Ive never had a problem with Steam being slow, but then again I have a higher than average computer.biggest_loser

I noticed that when exiting L4D2 my computer really slows to a grind for a short period so its annoying if you have instant messages ready to read or something.

If you try to close steam it says close the application first even though I've exited the game.

Also its incredibly slow if you alt tab during a game unlike Mass Effect 2 which returns almost instantly.

Is there anyway to fix this stuff?

biggest_loser

[QUOTE="biggest_loser"]

I noticed that when exiting L4D2 my computer really slows to a grind for a short period so its annoying if you have instant messages ready to read or something.

If you try to close steam it says close the application first even though I've exited the game.

Also its incredibly slow if you alt tab during a game unlike Mass Effect 2 which returns almost instantly.

Is there anyway to fix this stuff?

carlosjuero

Or is it Steam Cloud's fault? Don't these games synchronise with it when you exit? AFAIK b_l is blessed with a crappy Internet connection...

[QUOTE="biggest_loser"][QUOTE="Iantheone"]Get a faster computer? Ive never had a problem with Steam being slow, but then again I have a higher than average computer.Iantheone

Yeah man, Steam takes up like a whole 20mb of RAM! It's a beast.

[QUOTE="carlosjuero"]

[QUOTE="biggest_loser"]

I noticed that when exiting L4D2 my computer really slows to a grind for a short period so its annoying if you have instant messages ready to read or something.

If you try to close steam it says close the application first even though I've exited the game.

Also its incredibly slow if you alt tab during a game unlike Mass Effect 2 which returns almost instantly.

Is there anyway to fix this stuff?

Baranga

Or is it Steam Cloud's fault? Don't these games synchronise with it when you exit? AFAIK b_l is blessed with a crappy Internet connection...

It could be Steam Cloud for L4D2 - one way to find out is to watch the games list when exiting the game, if you see 0% - Syncing... [or 'updating' or something similar] then Steam Cloud could be slowing things down a bit. Not all games use the cloud for save/settings syncing though - only Valve games (not all) and a few non valve titles (Torchlight uses it).

A majority of third party games do not have any interaction with Steam besides updates and [sometimes] Achievments.