Sorry if this is a dumb question, but to be clear, you did go to tf2 in the steam store and click install, yes? That's what you need to do to detect an already installed game. It will then go through all the files you already have installed, which might take up to half an hour.

If it doesn't detect the game then you should be able to tell pretty early that it doesn't when it starts redownloading tf2, but shouldn't it then recreate the tf2 folder at the beginning anyway? If it really does require a different name then that will tell you.

Try it out, just join a game, choose a class and type cl_interp 0.15 or whatever. You'll get a console error telling you that it can't be changed unless you switch to spectate. Being dead counts as spectating so if you change classes then your interp will change. However if you spawn as soldier then switch to scout and your scout cfg has a different interp, it won't change, you can check for yourself in console. This was to stop the 0.5 interp glitch that let snipers get a free 500ms of everyone frozen when switching interps. The easiest headshots ever ensued before it was patched.

Your interp can only be changed in game when you are dead/spectating. If you change class to scout while you're already spawned your interp won't change, but it should if you change while you're dead.

Thank you, if I get the chance to look into it and find anything useful I'll post the results in a new thread. Thanks for the guide and harbis thanks for the continual punctual updates.
e: Thanks Kermit

Is it in theory possible that if I follow that guide but for in game effects like the quick fix uber (if you can even do that to particles) or phlog flames or something else annoyingly laggy it would work and not be blocked by sv_pure?

Well yes but that wasn't what was asked, I think the original question was just asking about whether you'll get vacced or a steam account ban or something just for playing (not hacking) an early tf2 version. I don't think there's much to worry about there.

Aren't all tf2 servers apart from listen ones vac secured?
There are actually a few people hosting really early version (like 1.0.0.9, launch was 1.0.0.0) servers.
I doubt valve gives a hoot though.

Fuck 07 tf2, I want to play this.

Wiki says that was changed in prerelease, so probably not.

Well I'm not trying to get anyone banned, it's exceedingly unlikely that valve will ever ban for it, they never have and people have used it for years (including me for almost a year now). But don't use it if it worries you. For someone scrambling for frames it's useful as they very likely have no gpu anyway. I've never really heard what phrax said before, that integrated gpus may do better without it. I guess I'll have to test it so for now, use it or not at your own discretion.

Thanks for mentioning this guys, I should have done so myself. Apologies.

Either the /tf or the /bin folder. I never bothered verifying which it was and just put it in both lol

There, I edited it to be clearer just for you

Yes

Apparently it's because bots used to stare stupidly at the tiny height differential on the left side of the room that had no stairs. So instead of fixing the broken bot behaviour they added stairs. Perfect.

Ok if you need more than configs:
Install swiftshader, it boosts your shader rendering speeds by a lot e: it's been pointed out that this could get you vac banned (in theory, although it's very unlikely) and probably won't make that much of a difference to your framerate anyway.
Ensure you have set your laptop to high performance mode
keep your laptop plugged in when playing
Set your graphics card to max performance/min quality. You can likely do this even if you have integrated graphics, i know you can do it with 'intel hd graphics'
If you have a gfx card look up and use a level of detail (lod) tweak to make your game look like minecraft and use less gfx power
Install nohats and nohats-effects (removes most unusual effects, tbh i'm not sure where i got this file lol but presumably from one of the nohats threads)
Go through your advanced options and if anything is on anything but the lowest setting look up the cvar from it and edit it in your autoexec to the lowest setting
If you have spec/pro killstreak weapons make sure you have viewmodels for them off lol
Avoid pyros (they kill my fps) and quick-fix ubers (likewise)