Steam Stealth Mode

[galient5]

You click a button and everything steam does stops (other than time played, achievements and friends (which could be handled by the overlay)) that way if you have a game (looking at you Crysis) that's hard on your computer steam isn't slowing it down.

[Amander]

Can you explain how that's different from the current behaviour? Right now, it tracks your time played, achievements and friends, everything else does stop. At least the downloads, Steam's not doing anything else by itself.

[Sagenth]

Indeed. It isn't as if it is constantly calculating the number of games you have or.. you know what I can't even imagine what you are thinking it's doing.

It updates your friends list and keeps track of a counter. Then there is the overlay which keeps a look out for you to press a key combo.. I wouldn't call any of it processor intensive.

[Kamiyama01]

Steam is actually a massive botnet that is secretly using your extra processing power to calculate the human genome. Once Valve has finished their research, they will release a mutagen that will change our brain chemistry by adding an intense psychological urge to purchase all their games.

The only way to stop this dastardly plan is to always play your games in offline mode.

[Sagenth]

Steam is actually a massive botnet that is secretly using your extra processing power to calculate the human genome. Once Valve has finished their research, they will release a mutagen that will change our brain chemistry by adding an intense psychological urge to purchase all their games.

The only way to stop this dastardly plan is to always play your games in offline mode.
They did it all for the lulz

[L.o.D.]

It sounds as if his steam install is slowing his gaming down.
If his computer is having issues with steam, maybe it's the idea that it cannot handle crysis ?

[Kamiyama01]

There are a few things you can do to speed up your computer a little bit:

I'm not responsible if you screw up your computer. Try these methods at your own risk.

1. Turn useless programs off.
Click Start, Run, and type "msconfig" into the command line.
Go to the Startup tab, and de-click (unselect) any programs that you don't want to start automatically when your computer boots up.

^ A lot of programs assume that you want them to run all the time, and start on boot up. I have found that all I really need is my anti-virus and anti-spyware, and a couple drivers. There are about a dozen things in the list that I turned off, and have no impact on my computer's performance other than it boots a little faster now. Be careful about turning off drivers. If you find that you needed them, just go back and turn them on again. If it was something REALLY important, like a video driver, you can boot into safe mode and turn it back on again. Tap f8 as your computer starts up.

2. Run a system cleaner.
This is a good one:
http://www.comodo.com/home/support-maintenance/system-cleaner.php
Comodo is a fairly decent free antivirus company. Not everyone favors them personally, but I've never had a problem with Comodo. The System Cleaner cleans all your temp files, cookies, personally identifiable information that your internet browsers collect, and fixes registry errors. (like registry entries for games you played, then uninstalled)

This also likes to start on boot up and frequently updates when I'm playing a game, causing it to crash. Which is why I like to turn it off through MSCONFIG until I actually need to use it.

3. Defragment your hard drive.
This one should be obvious. Do it at least once a month.

* I just want to forewarn you to be careful. Obviously I can't look over your shoulder and tell you not to do something bad.

** If these methods don't work, you probably don't have the hardware to run Crysis properly.

[Sagenth]

This is my performance fix list.

1.) Reformat System Drive
2.) Install OS
3.) Boot OS
4.) Install Games from Steam Library
5.) Run "Defraggler" on steamapps directory
6.) Install COMODO Internet Security
7.) Install other apps.
8.) Pay attention to installations and only have necessary applications and services startup with the OS
9.) Create a Clone Image of the Fresh Install using Clonezilla and save it to another HDD
10.) Enjoy my clean PC

I have never seen anybody else ever mention any COMODO product. That is awesome!

I find this process works better than disabling startup programs using msconfig or the admin tools>services.msc

[galient5]

No I realize how to do all this, The thing is that steam takes up 51 mb of memory which isn't much but I bought crysis retail and on steam, when I close out of steam, drop box and fire fox, I can run retail maxed out at 50 frames. When I just close out of drop box and fire fox and leave steam running because I want to use my steam copy, I can only play it on high settings with electronic noises.

[galient5]

Can you explain how that's different from the current behaviour? Right now, it tracks your time played, achievements and friends, everything else does stop. At least the downloads, Steam's not doing anything else by itself.

Because steam does much more than that, Steam is always checking for new gifts being sent, It updates new, your and your friends community profiles and everything they do. It'd be nice If steam just checked messages and invites, time played, and achievements rather than do everything, or at least do everything passively.

[Sagenth]

*Have steam move it's data into the page file when in game; all non mission critical data* I estimate that would mean all of it minus whatever the overlay might be pointing to.

[CTRL ALT DEL !]

If the game doesn't use VAC, you can launch the game, alt tab and quit steam.

[Jagged Tooth]

Steam is actually a massive botnet that is secretly using your extra processing power to calculate the human genome. Once Valve has finished their research, they will release a mutagen that will change our brain chemistry by adding an intense psychological urge to purchase all their games.

That sounds closer to SkyNet

[galient5]

If the game doesn't use VAC, you can launch the game, alt tab and quit steam.

Regardless I still want it to track my achievements and what my friends are up to etc.