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After the rebuild of the HERA interaction regions the experimental detectors were limited by beam induced backgrounds. Four types of background mechanisms were observed and identified - proton gas scattering, lepton gas scattering, synchrotron radiation and proton beam-halo losses. With some refined beam steering methods it was possible to tune the synchrotron radiation background to acceptable limits. The remaining most important effect was the scattering of the beam particles, mostly the protons, at the residual gas. In this contribution we describe our systematic attempts to investigate the complex behavior of the beam gas background and the measures taken to improve the situation. This includes dynamic pressure profile simulations and measurements, experimental determination of the background sensitivity profile along the beamline, the pressure development with current and time, and residual gas analysis. The background conditions were finally improved due to long term conditioning with beam, modifications of internal masks which were heated by higher order mode losses and moderate improvements of the pumping speed at strategic locations.
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