"Preparing to launch [game here]..." pops up for extended periods of time

[Doomish]

Thread title. Whenever I go to launch a game, the message box pops up and usually goes away instantly and the game comes up (Except in TF2's case for some reason). However, for the past week or so, I've been sitting here for nigh 30 minutes before the game actually runs. Any solutions?

[Hell-met]

garrysmod does this to me, taking up to 5 solid minutes

[playelite]

Veify game cache then try it

[~ZOMG]

Run a defrag of all your source games.

Do you leave your PC on all the time?

Do you have a lot of addons/reskins/replacement models?

[Doomish]

[QUOTE=~ZOMG;21988269]Run a defrag of all your source games.

Do you leave your PC on all the time?

Do you have a lot of addons/reskins/replacement models?[/QUOTE]

In order from the top, I'll do that in a second and post results, yes, and no. The only real replacements I have are for Left 4 Dead and they're in VPK format.

[editline]03:08PM[/editline]

Verifying my cache on Team Fortress 2 (takes the longest to load) did me no good, however, when I tried it on Half-Life 2, it worked like a charm. I'm having some varied results here but the problem is mostly fixed.

[doonbugie]

Make sure your hard drives aren't dying

[ashxu]

happens to me to. But it usually only happens if my internet is capped to 7kb/s.

[editline]11:00AM[/editline]

and my computer is only 2 months old.

[lukepker]

[QUOTE=ashxu;22000959]happens to me to. But it usually only happens if my internet is capped to 7kb/s.

[editline]11:00AM[/editline]

and my computer is only 2 months old.[/QUOTE]

wtf you get your internet capped to 7kb/s?!

[ashxu]

Yeah.

Australian internet :|

I have 7gb of internet allowance then i get capped to 7kb/s.

So when I'm not using steam very much i cap steam's download speed to 3kb/s so it doesn't slow down Firefox. When i use it I remove the cap.

I use basically every trick in the book to optimize my internet.