The problem: when I am downloading anything with Steam, no matter where I am or what I am connected to, it pauses the download after a few seconds.
It's a SERVER issue, either Steam or your own IP. Steam access can vary during times of SALES, however I've been using it for about four years and rarely see the download drop below 725KB/second (my maximum download rate). Steam will examine the game’s files and – if any problems are detected – will re-download the corrupted files from Steam’s servers. To validate a game’s cache, right-click the game in your Steam library and select Properties. Windows 10 and steam stop start download issue The steam client for downloading PC games has stopped working correctly where it used to download without issue about two builds ago. Downloads used to be continuous but now stop and start intermittently. The files download as fast as my cable modem allows and I have the full game with simple cracking instructions a few minutes later. Why in the world would I want to drive to a store and give them. Steam recently started downloading an update for Super Monday Night Combat.Remembering the fact that the game never ran properly for me, and that I was unable to ever find any fix, I impatiently paused the download and deleted all local files from my computer. It's a SERVER issue, either Steam or your own IP. Steam access can vary during times of SALES, however I've been using it for about four years and rarely see the download drop below 725KB/second (my maximum download rate).
Behavior:
- Select item to download
- Navigate to library -> downloads
- [probz] Game is displayed 'downloading', network speed listed, etc (normal behavior)
- [see Picture 1 below]
- After a few seconds, game stops downloading
- Game is now listed as 'update required (not queued)'
- [see Picture 2 below]
- Click 'move to top of queue'
- goto [probz]
Picture 1
Picture 2
I can workaround this by babysitting the 'move to top of queue' button but for large games this isn't practical.
Things I have tried:
- Wired connection
- Using a different network (many, many different networks)
- Changing Steam download server/location
- Reinstalling Steam
- Deleting tons of Steam files and redownloading them
- Freeing up disk space
- Changing download speed/limit on Steam
- Stopping background programs/other internet accessors
- Adding '-tcp' flag to Steam launch options
- Running as administrator
- Crying
This is a problem I've been having for some time and have tried many solutions (see above). I'd love to see a definitive solution to it, especially since I pretty much can't play any game > 1 gb.
OS: Windows 7 Professional, 64-bit
System: Lenovo T420 (laptop), Intel i7-2620M, 8gb ram, NVIDIA NVS 4200M
Connection: Up to 45 mpbs AT&T UVerse (usually clocks in at around 30-something)
EDIT: I would like to note that I used to work in CS (see my Stack Overflow profile), so I do know how to do things like 'make sure your internet connection works', 'don't let other programs hog bandwidth', and 'disable background processes'. Because my internet connection works perfectly for everything else I do, including high-bandwith activities (gaming, netflix, other downloading) I would guess that it is not the problem. Especially since I can workaround through queue babysitting (see above). The ONLY problem I have is with Steam, and ONLY when downloading new games.
Thanks for the suggestions so far.
2 Answers
Try disabling ANY processes that might interfere with your downloading (I fixed mine by disabling Skype). You can find the processes here: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9828-SFLZ-9289 Let me know if this helped!
Have you tried changing the download restrictions Steam asks you for when changing the download region?
You can get there by clicking Steam --> Settings --> Downloads
When you change your region, you should be prompted to change your download speed (Modem towards faster speed, Dial-Up towards slower.
Could be the issue you're having. I have had this issue previously, but by changing my download speed to No limit (despite having an average 2mb/s), it helped fix it.
I would daresay this though; it seems plenty of others are having the same issues as you have as well, albeit for different reasons.
protected by Community♦Dec 6 '14 at 20:32
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I am experiencing the same issue. I have seen this in som older tickets specially in #3510.
My symptoms are that I try to download a game to be installed on linux. The client downloads som data then gets stuck in writing to disk. Ages go by where most of the GUI in the steam client freezes up.
Why Does My Steam Update Keep Stopping
I have seen that many people suggest that Steam is just busy with IO. So I looked at the process specfic IO and overall disk IO. None are even close to be at full throtle. The steam process who manages the IO for the game sometimes tuches 99.99% of all disk IO whis is about 130 KB/s never above 150 KB/s. Same goes for jbd2. It does go up to 99.99% more frequent. But I would hardly say all the time. Quite literary half the time there is no IO going in for any process.
So I also looked at the overall disk IO:
This is a snapchot copy+pasted from iotop but showes what a most values are when they are not 0.
I then used gkrellm to monitor the specifik partition I use for my Steam install (sda2) and to have something to compare i simply used my entire main disk (sdc). I also setup alerts to show a warning if IO rose above 30 KB/s for more than 1 secund. And an Error if it rose above 40 KB/s for more than 1 secund. I do get the alert, but rarley. About maby two that blinks past in the timespan of 1 minute.
I also noticed that when I pause the download, and have started Steam from a terminal, I get loats of these errors before the download goes into paused mode:
I have seen quite a few of these googling the internet, but no real fix. Least not one that works for me. My disk is local, mounted with barrier=0. Not symlinked in any way. Running an ext4 filesystem that has about 1.3 TB of free space, 4.4 GB of used and is solely used for Steam games.
Steam Games
I tried to test if the disk would show similar bad performance with other tasks, so I used caja to simply copy a folder containing about 13 GB of data in a couple of files. Result below:
PID | PRIO | USER | DISK READ | DISK WRITE | SWAPIN | IO | COMMAND
-----|---------|---------|----------------|------------------|------------|-----|----------------
4859 | be/4 | ******* | 62.38 M/s | 62.44 M/s | 0.00 % | 82.08 % | caja -n [pool]
Downloaded and setup steam windows client with wine. Got same download speeds and same symptom of it getting stuck in Writing to disk, while iotop shows that not particulary much is happening on the disk.
Why Does My Steam Download Stop Motion
Below is my System information running Steam client API v017, package version 1419038262. It is beta, but I have already tried stable, and gives exactly the same symptoms.