The past two weeks my TF2 has randomly started to do this weird timeout thing while I'm playing scrims and communicating with my team in mumble.

The specifics of it: I'll be playing normally for a round or two when suddenly, while nothing particularly out of the ordinary is occurring in game, my screen will freeze for about 10 seconds or so. While it's frozen I can't move my mouse to look around (so that makes me think it's my computer's fault, not my home internet's fault). Now not only does TF2 stop functioning normally for these 10 seconds, but I also stop hearing my team in Mumble. This seems to be more than a coincidence and I suspect the two programs are fighting over bandwidth resources or something. Also when TF2 decides to start "lagging me back in" to the game it looks all jittery and I have to record and stop a demo in order to see the enemies again.

Before you start typing template suggestions...

Things I have tried to fix it:

1) Using the -autoconfig launch option to force TF2's settings back to default. I even took it a step further and removed my custom hud while doing this.

2) Defragging my entire "steamapps" folder with GCFScape.

3) Disabled some Windows background services that were worthless.

4) Completely unplugged every ethernet cable in my house, turned my modem and router off, and systematically powered them back on.

All of this and I'm still getting this weird timeout issue. I am getting really tired of things not working. Do any of you kind people have any more suggestions for me to try?

I'm sure you've already tried it - but in steam "properties ---) Verify Integrity of the Game Cache" can work sometimes.

Depending on what card you're using if you recently changed drivers that can cause all sorts of random crap to happen in tf2 - I'm actually using older drivers for one of my ATI card because the new drivers brought back that old freeze bug (from like Halloween update where everybody was freezing up for 1-3 seconds).

It could also be something with your ram or CPU - have you been able to cntrl+alt+del or run a utilization tool to see how much of those things are being used during the freezes - or is the machine completely locked up?

- with tf2 and steam, anytime anything is weird do a spy/malware scan.

Just throwing out suggestions from crap I've had to do :/

Worst case try a reinstall - I have to occasionally reinstall tf2 (prolly 3-4 times a year) because I have a crappy HDD.

Thanks Marxist for the suggestions. I went extreme with your ideas and actually just completely reinstalled TF2. Still having timeout issues. It's exhausting.

This has been affecting my scrims, pugs, etc, and I hate it.

I have definitely ruled out this being a TF2 issue. I have even noticed while watching several videos today that my connection has pooped out momentarily. I can't seem to find where the weak link is.

I'm tempted to literally replace my modem and every cable that runs between my modem and this computer. I really suck at hardware troubleshooting.

Sounds like the easiest fix is calling your ISP - I mean obviously it could be a cable, your network card, your modem/router(s). But it could just be instability on your ISP's part or maybe your modem just needs a hard reset (something your ISP has to do).

I had this issue where every night without fail at 9 pm, 10:30 Pm, and 12 AM and 12 PM and 6 AM I would lose the internet for about 30 seconds. This made scrimming and matches a giant pain. I called my ISP after it went on for 2-3 days and they had a tech come and check some wires and did a hard reset from wherever it is they do that stuff and I haven't dropped since lol.

When in doubt call your ISP - worst case you can rage at somebody for a while lol. I use frontier DSL and have to call them like 2-3 times every few months to get that thing working correctly. Worst case they tell you everything is great and it's something on your end - then you can start rummaging through the house for spare cables and network cards n' such lol. Also, if you call and they don't say "we'll put in a trouble ticket" or "we'll send a tech" be sure and call back the next day or in several hours - occasionally the amount of help you get depends entirely upon who answers your calls and some of them will throw tons of resources your way because they don't care if some boss yells at them for sending 30 techs to your place to make sure everything is OK lol.

tracert <some tf2 server ip>

see where the breakdown is