Anyone ever here of the gaming company valve? Well they made a gaming community program called Steam thats been around for awhile now, and I was wondering if anyone had a steam account? They’re not hard to get really, and well even if you dont have games its still pretty fun, its kinda like myspace but with games that you pay for.
Re: Steam?
I do 
I have 49 games on it but I would rather not reveal the name because I use it alot for non-dl things.
Re: Steam?
I have it. I play Team Fortress 2 all the time. I also have Half Life 1 and Portal on there, but Portal is too heavy for my computer to run smoothly.
You can PM me and I’ll give you my screenname.
Re: Steam?
TF2, and ZM are my time off work, g/f is working treats.
ZM btw is zombie master, same engine and play style as TF2, but with zombies and requires much more teamwork.
Re: Steam?
To be honest, I can’t stand the idea of not having a hardcopy of a game if I’m going to pay for it. Granted, downloading it straight to your PC is a decent bit of convenience but it’s also subject to virus’s and formatting. Even if you’re allowed to redownload it, it’s still redownloading a game, which on average are 2 to 3 gigabytes in size these days.
Re: Steam?
that’s why I normally go out and buy the games, back them up on my pc, and hang the game in box on my wall of games.
We’ve all had those moments where a harddrive has died, or a corrupt os, virus ect…
I agree with the view point though, games are getting bigger, and if your system crashes it would be a bitch and a half to redownload it again.
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For me a night isn’t a night unless I have put my computer to use, usually downloading or installing something. I can’t sleep without the noise of my PC see 
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I’m the same way Jyfer,
I am working on programming a game, unless I get a bit done each day I don’t sleep.
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For me a night isn’t a night unless I have put my computer to use, usually downloading or installing something. I can’t sleep without the noise of my PC see
You’re gonna burn your PC out that way. By leaving it on and forcing it to do continual processing for as long as you sleep can be very harmful over time, shortening the lifespan of your computer.
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How so? Can you elaborate?
Is it OK to leave a laptop in sleep mode all night? I don’t power down my laptop too often.
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Actually there are two schools of thought on this issue (assuming the machine is properly vented and cooled).
One says that turning on and turning off your computer is harmful. This is because when you do, the system heats up, and the solder junctions can loosen over time from contracting and expanding at a different rate than the copper on the motherboard or video card.
The other says that leaving it on will cause an increase in bleed-through on a lot of integrated circuits, including processors. This means that components allow electricity to flow where it shouldn’t like diodes that prevent electricity from moving through certain parts of the chip allowing increasingly larger amounts of electricity to flow in the wrong direction.
I happen to believe that the first one is correct. I have run more than 500 servers for years at a time, only shutting them down to do physical maintenance (blow dust out, replace a fan, etc…) for a short time, without hardware failure. I never shut my system down, unless it’s to upgrade a component.
Laptops can have a different dynamic, because they have a much tighter tolerance where heat is concerned.
BB
Re: Steam?
I have done hardware maintenance and I only shutdown my personal PC once every 3 weeks so it can take a break and doesn’t get pissed at me.
I have noticed if there is not proper ventilation and or cooling the system will crash and burn everything out.
example.
my first build I was 12 yrs old.
I didn’t bother with venting it, it caught fire. Yes I said fire, and no I am not exaggerating it caught a curtain on fire and ruined the entire system.
so if your PC is not built for continuous use do not allow it to happen.
my new build will be able to run for at least six months without shutdown, as long as there are no new OS updates with windows 7 anytime soon.
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Plus, if you have a mineral-water cooling tower, leaving it on 24/7 isn’t as bad. Though, that kind of setup is extremely expensive.
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yes, it is.
my brother bought me a reservoir that was pricey alone.
I am working on buying the entire system myself for my new build, but as jaks said it is pricey.
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Years ago when many of the chips on the mother boards were plugged into sockets, there was a problem called chip creep. As the machine would warm up and cool off the chips would literally creep out of their sockets. That is no longer a problem though. When my customers ask if they should shut their computers down, I tell them it doesn’t matter.
I have 2 servers of my own that run continuously. Every time I upgrade my desktop systems, I use the old hardware for a server. I never have a problem with failed hardware. Since I do a round of upgrades every 3 or 4 years, the old servers are usually 6 or 7 years old by the time I’m done with them. The things that usually go out are power supplies and hard drives, but only rarely. And yes, they are well vented.
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[b]"Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. It appears this thread has been hijacked. Please remain calm and I’ll try to set this bird down for an emergency landing as soon as possible.
And once again, thank you for flying abdlstoryforum. We know you have a choice of story forum… and we’re happy you chose us." [/b]
Re: Steam?
not sure about last response but okay…interesting…
@tuffy mouse
I build PC’s for people, and that is a big question I get venting.
I build personal computers, as well as HTPC, home theater PC’s.
I explain to each person how I built the system without getting too complicated, and I tell them simply, if they do not clog the vents they are safe.
I have seen many times including with my own, the system caught fire for bad ventilation.
EDIT: didn’t mean to seem like a dick DA, glad to see we are back up. Love the star trek reference BTW I made a phaser in middle school in electronics 1.
fun project.
I currently have a dedicated external fan cooling my system during the day. rigged it up to run off solar.
but you are correct, if the system is not ventilated bad things happen.
Re: Steam?
Sorry to keep it off topic but… I have had my PC for 2 years in October and I think the longest it has ever been turned off is around 6 hours when I was moving house. It’s custom built with a very decent case for plenty of cooling (5 fans built in + 2 added) and I take it apart bi-monthly to clean it down which probably helps. I have seen no decrease in performance since the day I got it unless you count the inevitable build up of crap you get from having 1.5tb of HDD space.
But to bring it back on topic. I was thinking about sharing my steam name but it’s also linked to my twitter account and other stuff which my family use so it would probably be a bad idea in the long run
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Fragmented files, more services starting up due to updates. Left over dll files that belong to removed applications, having too many fonts (especially true if you’ve installed any adobe or corel image editing products), and of course having too many services coming on at startup from installed applications
EDIT: fixed some dropped words
Re: Steam?
Since we’ve gone completely off the rails on the topic issue, I guess it won’t hurt to keep going.
Joey is right. Use a program like msconfig to remove all unessential programs from the startup process. You don’t really need to have Acrobat, Real Player, Quick Time or any of that other junk resident in memory just in case you happen to activate one of their files. If you don’t recognize a program in the startup list, google for it to see if it is essential for your computer. Sometimes the ethernet and video drivers don’t have descriptive names and removing them would be bad, mkay?
Also use a program to track down all the unused DLL files.
Next defrag your files, but before starting, turn off your virutal memory and reboot. A fragmented paging file is the kiss of death and Windows won’t defragment it for you. You might need to start it back up in safe mode if you’re short on memory. The defrag process can take 10 or more hours, so be patient.
After the defrag turn virtual memory back on, but tell it to use a custom size and set it to something big like 2GB (if you let Windows manage it, the file starts small and grow into fragments). Set the same value for both the minimum and maximum size. And don’t forget to click the “Set” button on that dialog. Then reboot again.
I’ve used this process to breathe life back into a lot old systems before and while it’s a PITA, I usually get good results.