While Steam is a wonderful platform that offers thousands of games for users to purchase and play, it does have its downsides. When you’ve preloaded a game, Steam will have to unpack it on release day so you can access it. This process could take a long time and the amount of time it takes to unpack a game can fluctuate, making you unsure when it’ll be done. If you find yourself dealing with Steam unpacking slowly, there are a few ways to try and make it go faster without having to buy a solid-state drive (SSD).
Restarting Steam
The easiest way to help speed up the unpacking process is by restarting Steam completely. You can do this by right-clicking on the Steam icon located on your taskbar and then hitting Exit Steam. This will shut down Steam completely. Once you start Steam back up, you’ll need to log into your account. Once you do, the unpacking will resume.
Set Steam’s priority to high
One solution you can try is by changing Steam’s priority to high on your computer. Doing this will make your computer focus its resources on whatever task the program is trying to complete.
Open up Task Manager and then head over to the Details tab. Scroll down until you can find Steam.exe. Right-click on it and change its priority to high.
Deleting temporary data in the depotcache folder
You may have never heard of the Depotcache folder before. This folder contains temporary data that Steam needs for one-time use. Although these files are usually small in size, when you have a growing library of games, the space they’ll take will add up and could hinder any processes, like unpacking.
First, close Steam because otherwise, you won’t be able to delete anything in the depotcache folder. Once you do that, head over to the depotcache folder. Its location will vary from person to person depending on where you installed Steam. For most users, it will be located here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\depotcache.
Now, delete everything in the depotcache folder. They’ll end up in your recycling bin and go there and confirm you want to delete those files.
Defrag your hard drive (HDD)
If your computer is acting slow, it may be because your HDD is running out of space due to all the files it makes on a daily basis. Defragging can help make your computer faster and in turn, make any processes it takes on quicker.
To defrag an HDD, go to your computer’s search bar and type in defrag. Click on the option that says, “Defragment and Optimize Drives.” You’ll then be presented with a menu of your drives. Click on the drive you want to defrag and hit Optimize.
