Steam games won't start due to the defraggler

[Sumeet Vishwakarma]

Seems like the steam games in my computer system are unable to start. They somehow give a kind of message and stop the game from playing. I guess this is all due to the defraggler installed in my system.

I always use defraggler, never had any problem related to it, in fact I enjoyed the result each time I ran the software. But yesterday I noticed that the steam games which are present in my hard drive were unable to start up. I tried to play almost all of them for the testing purpose. When I tried one of them i.e. Team Fortness 2, first of all it won’t start up and then later on the cache integrity doesn’t succeeded. Is there anyone who can resolve this issue and get me some perfect solution?

[CheeCha]

I am currently having the same issue. Initially I thought that the issue has something to do with only the game or the video card I am having but later on I realized that the games were unable to play only after when I ran the defraggler. I have not just tried testing only one game; in fact I tried some 2 to 3 game and found different result with none of them getting played.

When tried Overload, as usual it didn’t work but now the steam client wants to download the full game, and the same thing is with the Bully Scholarship edition. When tried with Tropico 3, it has all the filesave corrupted and now no new games work.

[Shurod]

It really seems very much strange, how come Defraggler have corrupted just the game which is quite unrelated. Nothing else in the whole system has been corrupted but only the steam games.

I actually did the fast defrag and then at the end was the same result which are already mentioned above. I also ran a Steam Internal defrag tool both before and after the defraggler use and the reports were 0% fragmentation on each and every game, even then the problem was caused due to the defraggler. Now what I have decided is to remove all the steam folders from the defraggler.

[Panop]

I have a defraggler version 2.06 in my system. Let me tell you the steam was closed when I ran the defraggler. Actually it was completely closed and now due to this I have closed all the programs except for the Microsoft security which is however essential, also the internet connection was off. My steam doesn’t have any protection realtime that could prevent the content coping or the changes in the game files. The only non-cheat is VAC which is somehow protecting from the start of the online valve game.

[Go!pee]

For you knowledge let me tell you that the steam defragger has the real advantage over the other defraggers only when it is being used with the games that actually use the GCF file format. These files which are actually a part of the virtual filesystem get internally fragmented after being updated. It’s only the steam defragger that can fix the internal fragmentation.

I guess the Team Fortress 2 is according to me is the only game that uses GCF files and is also frequently updated. The steam defragger is actually supposed to fix the normal fragmentation also but it doesn’t prove to be as effective as a simple defragging which is nothing but defragging the whole hard drive.

[JyotiT]

As we all know that steam is possible to warn us explicitly about the GCF based games. What I have decided is if the stream fails or if it is unable to warn me about the fragmented cache files then I would simply use a third party defragger and run it on the whole hard drive.

[-Deven-]

Let me tell you all who don’t believe this, the fault is for sure of defragger. I have a defragger version 2.08 installed in my system, yesterday when I tried to run a long and fast defragger with the defragger, excluding all the steam folders the fallout new vegas steam version and also all dlc and expansion location were in C:\Programs\Bethesda Softworks\Fallout New Vegas. And it wasn’t excluded from the fast defrag. This was resulted in re-downloading of all the Fallout new Vegas again. I am sure that what I said wasn’t wrong as I already have lot of experience in testing many open source programs. Yeah I am a Beta tester. So I am sure you people can’t blame anything or take out any fault in whatever I said.

[JustineBB]

I have never heard of seen about this issue until now. I have already defragmented my games partition number of times including steam present, and let me tell you I haven’t faced or noticed any issue or any corruption.

As I have SSD present in my system and also both steam+games installed there now I can’t further defrag or test. I think the GCF files could be physically defragged on disk but internally fragmented.

I would better suggestion you as I have been suggesting the same thing to others also that make sure that the steam is fully closed and then run a check disk on the drive.