Steam problems :[

[Edward]

I'm pretty sure this is the right forum to post it in, but anyways...

I am not sure when this started, but whenever I try playing any game off of Steam, whether it be Counter Strike, or Day of Defeat, the ping is always over 1000. I play other online games with great ping, so I dont think that is the problem. Why is this happening? I tried reinstalling Steam, and Counter Strike, but it stays the same. I have another computer at a different house that can play Counter Strike fine, and it's like 5x worse than the one I am using now. If there might be some reason why all the servers ping are over 1000 I would really appreciate to know why, and maybe how to fix this :] Thanks!

[bob the goat]

I've had this problem ever since they released steam. Something is eating your bandwidth. Make sure all p2p programs are closed (kazaa, morphius, limewire etc). Close all IM programs (except X-fire), yahoo I have found is the worst. Scan for viruses, adware, and spyware.

in the past all of those have caused me problems with slowing games down. Once I got rid of all of those my games are back in the < 80 ping range.

[Allanon754]

Yah; I would have to say scan your HD.

[Andara Bledin]

I would suggest both a scan with a good online scanner, and maybe a HiJack This scan to see what's loaded.

Also, go through your Admin Tools and disable WMS. I have yet to run into anything that uses it other than adware.

[Edward]

How do you scan your HD, just like a virus scan? Also, what is this WMS, I'm not sure if I'm admin either, but it is my computer so I assume I am :P

[MMOFanBoI]

Avast! Antivirus + Lavasoft AdAware scans. You can also post a Hijackthis! log at http://forums.spybot.info/forumdisplay.php?f=22 for professional help.
Good luck.

[Andara Bledin]

Yeah, scanning your hardrive is running a virus/spyware scan to check for junk.

WMS is the Windows Messenger Service, and I've yet to run into a valid reason to leave it running. To get to it you do the following (have to be in an Administrator level account):

Go to the Control Panel>
Choose Admin Tools>
Choose Services>
Choose Messenger>
Disable it from there.

[El_Vago]

Steam is most definitly a trixy pixe. Are you runing behind a router? If so several of my friends had problems with ping because their router didnt like the base ports Steam used, if I remember right its because Steam uses the same ports as some really old telnet based applications. So what you could try doing is making sure the router is behaving right by port forwarding the needed ports. A good tutorial for this is here

http://www.portforward.com/routers.htm

If you find youre router model number, you can even follow it per application helping you to set it up. Good Luk.