I am pissed

So this is the second time I got vac banned, in around 2 weeks. As some of you might know (or not), my Steam account got vac banned got banned about two weeks ago. I thought I had a good idea about how that happened, as I used a tool to rank up quickly and unlock everything in CoD MW2. So yeah, that sucked plenty of dick, seeing as I had a boatload of games on that account. And while the ban was only in effect for MW2, I'd rather not play on a banned account, as people visiting your community page can tell you have been banned, and they'll just automatically assume you're a cheater. But anyways, I accepted the ban, as I knew that using that tool could possibly get me banned.

I moved on, made a new account, and decided to just purchase the complete Valve pack from the steam store. This pack costs 90 euros, (80 pounds or something) + Gmod, which added up to 100 euros. I did this a little over a week and a half ago. To my surprise/shock I got vac banned _AGAIN_ last week. Any people who know me, know it's already hard enough for me to tell people I'm not cheating, on the TF2 server, without needlessly getting VAC banned. I have stayed away from any real cheats all of my gaming life. My 'cheating' being restricted to a week of transparent textures in CSS, and a victimless 'cheat' that allows me to rank up quickly in MW2.

Knowing it's impossible to be unbanned by VAC, I was furious when I tried to enter our TF2 server and a VAC popup appeared saying I couldn't enter the server, as it was VAC secure. I had just wasted 100 euros on an account I got to use for exactly 1 week. Knowing I wouldn't be unbanned, I still decided to contact Steam support. I reckon they get shit loads of mails everyday by VAC banned people hoping to get unbanned, as the only thing they sent back was a three line e-mail basically saying that I had used a cheat, which was picked up by VAC, and that I would have to create a new account, as the banned account will not be unbanned. After a few replies back and forth, I asked support if it could have anything to do with an overlay like Xfire ingame. The tech/support guy was confident that Xfire could not have caused this, as thousands of people use Xfire in steam games, and they don't get banned. Made sense, obviously, as I've been using xfire for years. After playing Mass Effect 2 for a few days, I started thinking about what could've caused it, as I hadn't injected any files while playing, and I obviously don't hack. I came to the conclusion all this was caused by a program called eVGA Precision which is an overclock, and monitoring program for use on Nvidia gpu's. I've been using that program for about 2 months when I bought a second hand 8800GT after my old HD3850 broke down. The problem doesn't lay within the problem being installed or used for overclocking, but the fact that you can enable an overlay for use in any game which displays the FPS, temperature and mhz of your card. I've been using that overlay ever since I started using the program. I asked the tech guy if that could be it, as I assumed it injects itself into the game the same way something like a wallhack would do. The tech guy said it is possible, but the last time he heard of something like that was a long time ago. I was pretty convinced the eVGA Precision tool was the troublemaker, especially as the guy from support didn't immediately deny the possibility like they normally do with VAC bans.

This led me to conclude that my first Steam account wasn't banned by the rank up tool I used in MW2, but rather by this program that also managed to give me my second VAC ban...
I'm not willing to risk another account, so I just decided to get it over with and go for a complete format of my HDD's. It's still strange, as I've googled around, and there are still few people who use this tool for a year and are not banned. But as of now, it's the only thing I can think of that makes any sense, especially seeing the support guy said it could have been possible. Apparently, it's a rare case. Yet it already happened to me two times in a row.

For those not sure what the overlay I'm talking about looks like: http://i47.tinypic.com/i57rld.jpg in the top left corner.

I tried to play TF2 on my first banned account (which until then only had a MW2 ban), and subsequently, it was also VAC banned from all source games, but only after it got banned from MW2 first. Which makes sense, as I almost exclusively played MW2 for the first few weeks of using the tool.

The problem is, quite a few people use this tool and are not banned (the majority). A few people use this tool and do get banned. These banned people are subsequently branded as cheaters who are too afraid to admit they cheat or something.

I'm completely livid. I just lost an account worth well over 200 euros, and then an account worth 100 euros due to some bullshit. And not only that, but I suspect people will now definitely brand me a cheat. Needless to say, I'm extremely pissed off, about the huge deal of money lost, the whole situation, and the fact that this is extremely bad for one's reputation.

Just for the smartasses who are now thinking "omg no wonder he's an awesome tf2 player he's been haxing for all this time": Die in a ditch, I haven't used any cheat.

For everyone else: I'll probably acquire another steam account and continue on playing TF2, depending on the admin application results (as in, playing right now, or taking a break).

Thanks for reading my rant.