Steam slowing down laptop?

[Crow_Nest]

I just got a lenovo laptop about 2 weeks ago. I can install tons of software on it and it still operates fine. However when i install steam and L4D, the shutdown/reboot time increases from about 8 seconds to 30 seconds. When i try to shut it down or restart, it stays at the windows is shutting down screen for ages before it finally shuts down. Hibernating takes pretty long as well. Start up seems to be normal though.

Im running on vista home premium. I soon switched to windows 7 RC1 and it was just as slow, but only after i installed steam and many other software apps i require. Did another reformat with W7RC1 without steam but with all the same software apps and it shuts down fast. I dare not install it to confirm cos im afraid i might corrupt things and have to reformat again. Any ideas?

EDIT: Brief specs of my laptop as follows

Lenovo IdeaPad Y450
Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 2.2GHz
NVIDIA GeForce G 110M 256MB
4GB DDR3 SDRAM
Hitachi 320GB HDD
Windows Vista Home Premium (Im using W7RC1 now though)

[CaptNKILL]

That's a nice laptop. It shouldn't have any problems with resources.

Have you checked the Steam forums?

[Crow_Nest]

That's a nice laptop. It shouldn't have any problems with resources.

Have you checked the Steam forums?

Thanks!

Yeah i just posted a thread on steam forums. I have a feeling it could be steam's network trying to communicate with windows, that explains the slow shut down. Funny why it doesnt affect every other computer ive used that has steam installed.

[nekrosoft13]

ok, go to Computer Management, Event Viewer, Applications and Services Logs, Microsoft, Windows and find Diagnostics-Performance

look for

This service caused a delay in the system shutdown process:
File Name : Eventlog
Friendly Name :
Version :
Total Time : 1372ms
Degradation Time : 727ms
Incident Time (UTC) : 5/11/2009 7:08:32

look at the entries in that log, maybe you will find something that is causing the delay, it also tells you how long of delay it caused.

[Butter Bandit]

Steam will **** up my laptop on boot and shutdown if I don't have a working network connection. It's stupid, and I haven't found a work around yet...except to make sure I'm always connected to the internet.

[bacon12]

You could set steam not to auto run, and just launch it when you are ready to use it.

[Crow_Nest]

ok, go to Computer Management, Event Viewer, Applications and Services Logs, Microsoft, Windows and find Diagnostics-Performance

look for



look at the entries in that log, maybe you will find something that is causing the delay, it also tells you how long of delay it caused.

Didnt know you could look for such things. Thanks, i'll give it a go. But where can i find computer management? Its not under my control panel. Is it placed somewhere else in windows 7?

You could set steam not to auto run, and just launch it when you are ready to use it.

Well i never set it on autorun at all so that cant be it. Anyway only shut down and reboot seems to be affected for some reason.

[saturnotaku]

Didnt know you could look for such things. Thanks, i'll give it a go. But where can i find computer management? Its not under my control panel. Is it placed somewhere else in windows 7?

Right-click on Computer, select manage, and the console will launch.

If you completely close Steam before shutting down and restarting, does the problem reoccur?

[Crow_Nest]

Well i installed steam into my D drive instead of C drive, which is where windows is installed. I installed audiosurf and L4D and i have no slow shut down or reboot. Before this i installed steam to C drive. Maybe that was the reason why it was slower. Somehow steam screwed up the OS when it was installed to C.

[fps_dean]

Steam has a problem on Windows 7. What it does for me, is seemingly randomly after opening and closing a game on steam, the computer gets really slow to do anything -- I right click on the taskbar, the menu comes up two minutes later, I put the mouse over task manager, another 30 seconds or so goes by and it highlights, I click on it, thirty seconds go by and I see the task manager icon in the system tray, but don't see the task manager. Five minutes go by, the task manager opens up and freezes up. All I can do is Ctrl+Alt+Delete and restart.

If I can find a pattern, it seems to be caused by whenever a Valve game changes the resolution from my desktop default of 1920x1200, so a game I did not yet configure seems to cause the issue....

If you remember right, Steam also had a ton of problems with Vista, and I'm fairly sure we are seeing the same cycle again with Windows 7, but the difference is everything else I've tried works great in Windows 7 so far... if they only left a classic-start menu in there, didn't bury all the options around in several unreleated places or remove them entirely and actually put some thought into the interface, Microsoft would have a big winner....