Source powered game loading

[M's]

Here lately when I try to launch any of my Source powered games TF2, CS:GO, & DoD:S. just to name the big ones,will take up to 5 min. for it to launch.

My non source powered games such as PvZ, Hard Reset, & Dog Fighter launch fairly quick.

I have defragged my drives, verified local content, defragged game files.

Any clue as to what it may be?

[Boss Llama]

I've not had anything take 5 minutes, nor quite so broad a spectrum of problems, but TF2 has definitely been very sluggish when it comes to launching for a little while now. Probably 30-45 seconds between the little "preparing to launch" box, and an actual screen. Considering it used to be about 1-2 seconds, it's very frustrating. I've heard a couple other folks complain about it too of late - I almost wonder if they changed the launcher somehow and its doing a bunch of checks or something before opening the game.

[Masakari]

Out of curiosity, I'd be curious to see if removing some of the custom maps and stuff would help. HD is clearly the bottleneck - with an SSD, the game seems to launch considerably faster, and I wonder if the issue is trying to cache/get a list of custom maps.

Kind of a left field option, but couldn't hurt.

[Flaming Cheese Wheel]

My TF2 launch timing since the recent large update has been similar to Alizee's... the first couple of times that starting TF2 required almost one minute, I actually opened Task Manager to see if it had crashed.

As far as map loading goes... heh, it still takes another 30 seconds to launch any maps. At that rate, with my map collection, if it was caching on game start, I would be able to have a complete lunch break before TF2 even started.

[M's]

Out of curiosity, I'd be curious to see if removing some of the custom maps and stuff would help. HD is clearly the bottleneck - with an SSD, the game seems to launch considerably faster, and I wonder if the issue is trying to cache/get a list of custom maps.

Kind of a left field option, but couldn't hurt.

I have very few custom maps, and I don't use a custom HUD.

My TF2 launch timing since the recent large update has been similar to Alizee's... the first couple of times that starting TF2 required almost one minute, I actually opened Task Manager to see if it had crashed.

As far as map loading goes... heh, it still takes another 30 seconds to launch any maps. At that rate, with my map collection, if it was caching on game start, I would be able to have a complete lunch break before TF2 even started.

I would be pleased if that was the case, but after I click TF2 the preparing to launch box remains on screen for up to 5 mins.

Then somedays it's like I'm using the worlds fastest and most powerful system.
More often than not, its like I'm trying to use a calculator to launch.

The other source games are slow as well, maybe up to 1-3 min. but nothing like TF2.

[The Spanish Inquisition]

anti-virus.