BleepingComputer.com: Games on Steam freeze while quicksaving?

This is a strange problem. Recently I've been having problems with the computer due to malware, and thankfully these issues seem to be resolved thanks to this site. However, a new problem has popped up concerning quicksaving in games. The only games I play i play through Steam, and I've encountered an issue.

On sunday, I was playing Fallout 3, a game I've logged 70 hours on without save issues. I notice some malware stuff pop up in the background, and I quicksave and exit the game, no problems. After getting rid of the malware and running combofix (I was asked to for the thread), the computer restarted and I went to open steam. Got the following message: "Illegal Operation attempted on a registry key that has been marked for deletion." This came up when I tried to run anything, so I rebooted and everything was fine. I go on Steam, startup Fallout 3, and find that quicksaving will freeze the game for 10-15 seconds, sometimes longer, before confirming I had quicksaved successfully and letting me continue. It's started doing this with Max Payne as well, although with Max Payne the quicksave freeze is about 3-4 seconds, and it also freezes for 3-4 seconds when I try to pause the game. I'm worried combofix may have removed something that affects saving in games. I have played both of these games before on this computer with no issues. Normal saves seem to work fine, but I would still like to use quicksaves without it freezing the game.

My system specs:
Processor: AMD Athlon 54 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ 2.60Ghz
RAM: 2GB
Graphic Card: Nvidia 9500 GT
OS: Windows Vista SP2

I've updated all my graphics drivers and stuff, and my hard drive has around 50gb of free space too. I've also reinstalled steam, verified game cache files and defragged the hard drive. If anyone has any ideas please reply. Thanks

This post has been edited by fdd: 11 August 2010 - 07:22 PM