I need help !!!

[Otis]

For the past 2 weeks, my connection has been total shit !!!! My screen either freezes up and i get that lost connection/kick warning for a few seconds, or i freeze up and everyone is moving around me.

I've reinstalled all my vid drivers, using driver sweep to remove anything uninstall dont take care of, and have tested Bioshock, COD4, and other games and have no problems, so it has to be network

And it's not the Stompfest servers, I've tried various other servers and have the same issues.

I have no firewall or antivirus running, no downloads on other boxes, I'm f-in lost, and about fed up.

A little spec:

intel dual 3.0 with EVGA 780i MB
4 GB PC 1066 RAM
EVGA 8800gts
Fatality Pro sound card

I've run countless tests, and can't seem to figure out whats wrong, i even uninstalled TF2 and reinstalled

is anyone else having similiar probs or ave any suggestions

[Prosthetics]

When your screen freezes is it a the end of rounds?

And how long does it last?

[Brandname]

It's weird that you have only been having this problem for the past two weeks, so I'm not entirely sure what the cause of that would be.

But I know personally ever since I've had this game, it will occasionally stutter and do a sound loop for about 10-20 seconds and pretty much freeze on my computer. Everyone else on the server sees me stop and die whenever an opponent encounters me. On my screen it just jiggles back and forth between two frames and all the other characters stop moving. I can usually see red on my screen when I start getting damaged by someone, but it remains frozen. Then after 20 seconds or so I just get back to normal (almost always sitting in respawn because I died). Sometimes it ends with what I can only describe as the sound of bubbles underwater. No clue what that's from.

I've heard of a lot of other people having a similar problem, and I think it might be a bug in the game that affects a lot of people.

[Timmah!]

It's weird that you have only been having this problem for the past two weeks, so I'm not entirely sure what the cause of that would be.

But I know personally ever since I've had this game, it will occasionally stutter and do a sound loop for about 10-20 seconds and pretty much freeze on my computer. Everyone else on the server sees me stop and die whenever an opponent encounters me. On my screen it just jiggles back and forth between two frames and all the other characters stop moving. I can usually see red on my screen when I start getting damaged by someone, but it remains frozen. Then after 20 seconds or so I just get back to normal (almost always sitting in respawn because I died). Sometimes it ends with what I can only describe as the sound of bubbles underwater. No clue what that's from.

I've heard of a lot of other people having a similar problem, and I think it might be a bug in the game that affects a lot of people.
I had this exact same problem on my laptop before I upgraded. I don't think this is what Otis is talking about, tho. By chance are you using a SigmaTel audio chipset? I'm just curious what the common denominator is...

[*dianne*]

Try calling your isp and see if you have problems in their system. Who do you use? Dave and I have problems like this and TW usually is doing matience at midnight or something. Its just not THAT common for us.

[ditship]

The thing where you freeze and everyone else is still moving around and talking...thats happened to me several times.

[JMaster299]

I get the same connection problems. Usually happens right after joining a server or during a round/map change. This is a Steam Issue that was supposed to be addressed in the last update but I have still run into the problem since. It just started happening to me last week. Read about it in the update here http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=posts&id=1686&cc=US
Leave it to Steam to just create problems out of no where.

[RoqueJa]

If you haven't already you might want to defrag your TF2 files and verify the game integrity. If its network related i don't know how much that will help, but it has helped me in the past when I've had performance issues

[The Spyro's A Pie!]

Otis I've been having similar problems for a while now. Right in the middle of gameplay the game will get uber laggy, will stutter a few frames, and then totally freeze up for about 5 seconds during which the red connection lost countdown beings. After about 5 seconds (sometimes longer) the game will recover and be perfectly playable again. I notice it usually happens once every half an hour. Otis are you running Vista by any chance?

[Otis]

yeah, i'm running Vista Ult 32

i tried defragging the TF2 files, that didn't work, so i uninstalled/reinstalled

it happens at all phases of the map, mostly when there is a lot of action, which made me believe it was frame-rate/video issue, reinstalling video drivers didn't help.

The only thing that has changed in the past few weeks is my bios, and with the update they made it impossible to turn on the SLI memory with 4 sticks of RAM installed, so I kicked it down to DDR2 800. I may try and go back to the old bios. its just f-ed up that its only with TF2 (though I didn't try COD4 online, just single player).

[Otis]

strange

I rolled my bios back 2 updates, got the SLI memory option back

and now everything is fine

PS....if you use a eVGA 780i, I wouldn't suggest any bios higher then P04