BIG problem...

[Bounty_Bam]

Right, Im have big problems playing HL2... I played the demo and that ran fine. so i bought the game and installed it fine. when i play single player mode, when i click "Start New Game" my pc crashes, OR, if im lucky, i get to play a bit of the game (usually upto the part at the beginning when you have to move the create to jump out of the window). My Radeon 9550 drivers are up-to-date, and my pc meets all the game's requirements. please help me.

Bam

 

[Bounty_Bam]

I have the idea that my graphics card may be overheating. How do i tell what cooling fan i have, so i could maybe get a new one? Is it the RPM?

 

[Barney Fife]

please write your system spec and see what type of rig you have before major purchases. As far as system crashes go, lots of things could have cause it hardware/software glitches etc.

 

[Bounty_Bam]

Windows XP
Pentium 4 CPU 3.00GHz
1024MB 3.00GHz
ATI Radeon 9550 (updated)

do you need to know anything else?

 

[Beerdude26]

That updated will probably mean 'overclocked', and overclocking can cause instability. Try downclocking it to normal. (Get someone that knows things about this stuff if you don't know how to begin doing that)

 

[Bounty_Bam]

right, ok. ive rolled back the driver update and ill try again thank you

 

[Elvish Legion]

I'm having the same problem, I believe it to be a driver issue (though the fact it reboots the whole computer is odd for a driver)

I go to load any steam game, it'll open to menu then reboot.

System Specs

AMD Athlon 64 2.4
512Ram
nVidia 6200

I suspect my driver as my old card (fx 5200) had no issue running...if it isn'tthe driver what else could it be?

 

[RabidJester]

I had a similar problem when I first got the game, and then later a similar problem with FEAR, and it turns out that it was my motherboard drivers that were out of date. So much for auto-updating software.

 

[Beerdude26]

right, ok. ive rolled back the driver update and ill try again thank you

Oh, so it wasn't overclocked

Having the newest drivers is always good, but trying some older ones might also work

 

[Elvish Legion]

Well now it just crashes out and gives me the opition to send an error report....saying that it was a .dll file

AppName: hl2.exe	 AppVer: 0.0.0.0	 ModName: datacache.dll
ModVer: 0.0.0.0	 Offset: 00008a37

should I try reinstalling?

 

[Beerdude26]

First, try validating:
steam://validate/220

And you can also try updating your drivers.

 

[Elvish Legion]

First, try validating:
steam://validate/220

And you can also try updating your drivers.

Turns out it was my soundcard out dated