Brand new "fix" for looping sound crash! (PagedPoolSize)

A

Akai Kishi

Guest
I joined the forum to let you all know about this! A new fix has been discovered that worked like a charm for me and many others when it comes to the looping sound crash.

I do NOT take credit for this, I didn't find it, i'm just relaying the info for your purposes!





Here's how you open Registry Editor:

Start Menu > Run > regedit

Surf down to this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

Double click on "PagedPoolSize". Hexadecimal is listed first. Change the "Value Data" to one of these below:
(Note: You only need to enter EITHER Hexadecimal or Decimal. They both are the same.)

Megabytes Hexadecimal Decimal
192Mb 0c000000 201326592
256Mb 10000000 268435456
384Mb 18000000 402653184

I went with the 384Mb option and it worked perfectly.

Once you are done, make sure you reboot your computer.​
Click to expand...

Enjoy!

I am now running in fullscreen mode, DX9 again, with most settings on high. Played for a total of 5 hours with this and NO crashes yet!!!

(Link source: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=598493&page=84 )






ALSO, Valve has found that a few AntiVirus programs have been interfering with steam (giving it 100% process priority and causing freezes). Specifically mentioned are AVG 7.5 and NOD32.
(Link source: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=603853 )

After uninstalling (do not just disabling/closing processes as it will NOT work!) AVG7.5 and running the registry fix, my system is working great with TF2. Might fix Ep1 too, but I haven't tried yet.




I really hope others find this to fix their problems. At least until they can patch/fix it inherently in steam/hl2 code.

Good Luck, and Good Hunting!:cheers:


---------------

Akai Kishi
 
I'm pretty sure it's AVG which is causing my problems...but I'm not uninstalling it unless I find another good free anti-virus program. Any suggestions?
 
This looks promising. I'm tempted to try it for the hell of it, but any word on potential side effects or how exactly it works?
 
Apocalypse89 said:
I'm pretty sure it's AVG which is causing my problems...but I'm not uninstalling it unless I find another good free anti-virus program. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

Try increasing the page pool size without installing AVG and see if it works cause i didn't have to uninstall Norton.

Laivasse said:
This looks promising. I'm tempted to try it for the hell of it, but any word on potential side effects or how exactly it works?
Click to expand...

I have been trying this fix and so far there has been no side effects. Make sure however that when Valve releases a patch to fix the problem to set to page pool size back to zero.
 
I'd be careful about trying things like this and the other effects it could have on your computer as a whole. Valve are regularly releasing patches for TF2 at this time (one even today) so you could wait it out, but if you wish to go for this fix then think about it carefully...
 
Hectic Glenn said:
I'd be careful about trying things like this and the other effects it could have on your computer as a whole. Valve are regularly releasing patches for TF2 at this time (one even today) so you could wait it out, but if you wish to go for this fix then think about it carefully...
Click to expand...
And definitely don't neglect to leave out one of the zeroeso when editing the registry entry, like I did -_- I had a lot of fun watching my computer freeze before I realised my screwup...
 
I switched to McAfee 8.5 enterprise, which my university gives out free to all students (past and present apparently). And there should be no side effects to increasing the pool size. Somehow steam is overloading the pagedpool forcing the crashes/freezes. They more or less know of the issue now and are looking into it, at least that's what I found after reading the steam forums regularly since TF2 was released.

People have been saying AVAST antivirus might work, and is free I think.

Oh, and yes, if you want to change the pool back just make the value 0. this tells windows to allocate it's own pool sizes I believe.
 
I'll test tomorrow. If it works good, I'll kiss every single one of you.
 
Awesome! Completely fixed! Move to help section and sticky!
 
Rapstah said:
Awesome! Completely fixed! Move to help section and sticky!
Click to expand...

I'm still worried about what will happen long term effects with your PC...but hell, if it fixes it, WOOT!

How the hell do people find these fixes? Do they go through every registry key and change it? :p
 
Some guys in the steam forum ran a pool monitoring program to see what was going on in the pool memory and noticed it was maxing out at 160mb, which was when the crashes occurred. They then increased the pool size, doubling it, and lo and behold!

Here's a snippet from the steam forums (quoted from Ktzero3):
Here is a bit more information about the Paged Pool Size for all not-so-technical people:

The paged pool is a certain marked section of RAM which can be paged, or moved to virtual memory if necessary. The nonpaged pool, on the other hand, must remain in RAM and cannot be moved to VM.

Virtual Memory is basically just hard drive space allocated to emulate RAM. VM accesses are a LOT slower than RAM accesses, so paging is not a desirable thing to do unless necessary.

The size of the paged pool is allocated by the kernel at startup of Windows. As far as I can tell, it is determined by looking at the size of physical memory, and virtual memory (which is probably determined by hard drive size).

Windows XP should expand the paged pool amount as the system requires more, but I don't know why this is not happening. By setting the paged pool amount manually in the registry, you are explicitly telling Windows to use X amount of hard drive space (aka virtual memory) for paging. This is typically not desired because it takes up hard drive space, but as far as I can tell, should be an ok solution in the long run. The only possible damage that can be done is if you screw up the registry while editing it.
Click to expand...
 
Maybe you guys should report it to Valve so they can look back into their engine and finally solve the issues if they really truely haven't fixed the error.
 
they know. There's a mod working on the forum topic that this fix was posted on. So they are certainly working on it now.
 
Uninstalling AVG seemed to work...I've played a couple of rounds on all High settings and no trouble whatsoever(previously it would've been 2-3 minutes until a crash). But for some reason I can't change the graphics level back to DX9...it still forces it into 8.1 even after I deleted the launch options, and the console doesn't recognize the dxlevel command. WTF?

Still haven't tested Ep. 1...will do later. In any case, it looks like the infamous stutter bug's finally been squashed(or will be soon). :D
 
Changing the PagedPoolSize did the trick for me. AVG is still running but I haven't had a crash since I made the change. :E
 
Apocalypse89 said:
But for some reason I can't change the graphics level back to DX9...it still forces it into 8.1 even after I deleted the launch options, and the console doesn't recognize the dxlevel command. WTF?
Click to expand...

You'll have to run it in -dxlevel 90 or 95.
 
That could work, but my point is, the game used to default to DX9(Seeing how I have a DX9 card) before I used launch options to lower it to 8.1 because of the crashes. Now it defaults to DX8.1. Why?

EDIT: NVM, I found out that once you start a game at a certain dxlevel, it gets "saved" until you change to another dxlevel through the launch option. Also, I tested Episode 1(by playing through the escort mission, which is the most crash-prone area in the game for me, at full settings and at DX9) and it works perfectly. yayz0rz
 
FatboyTim said:
Changing the PagedPoolSize did the trick for me. AVG is still running but I haven't had a crash since I made the change. :E
Click to expand...

And me. I haven't crashed yet, and AVG is still running. Lets hope all is good.
 
Apocalypse89 said:
But for some reason I can't change the graphics level back to DX9...it still forces it into 8.1 even after I deleted the launch options, and the console doesn't recognize the dxlevel command. WTF?
Click to expand...

Have you tried the command "-dxlevel 90"; similar to "-dxlevel 81"?
 
Yeah, it single-handedly solved the ancient "looping sound crash" problem for me. And just in time for Portal and Ep. 2.
 
FIXZ0red

Hi all,
I joined this forum in order to give thanks to Akai for sharing the fix and give credit to the original author! After not being able to play CSS for 2 months, with the fix i can! I also install the August DirectX 9.0c update to be sure!

YEEEYAH!
 
ZOMG WOOT!!!

Sorry if I'm resurrecting this thread or anything but I just registered to say thank you so much for this fix. The guys that found it are gods in my books. I haven't been able to play ANY games , and I mean any, not just steam ones, for 5 months (excluding free Sam and Max from steam and the old Counter Strike (no idea why they worked and nothing else did. I mean Morrowind didn't even work)). But then I came across this. Certain that I'd be spending the rest of my life trying fix after so called fix I gave this one a go too and I was shocked when I could finally get into Half Life 2s menu page. Soon I was trying every game I had installed and amazingly they all work 100%. Akai, you've made my day, aw heck you've made my month.

But if you'll excuse me I'm off to by 'The Orange Box'.
 
Tried this fix and it didn't work, in fact appeared to increase system failures (blue screen etc) so uninstalled it. Be cautious trying this out.
 
Worked for me

The fix worked for me.

CoreDuo 1.66Ghz, 1GB and 2GB of ram (I upgraded to 2GB and that didn't fix the crash), Radeon x1600 (mobile chip), dedicated 256MB ram on video card.

To refresh, HL2: E1 would start a new game (sometimes), get to the opening scene of getting pulled from the rubble by Dog, and the game would crash to desktop with looping sounds. Sometimes it would crash before it got to the first menu to select new game/load game. Crashed both with and without AVG free.

With 384MB registry hack, the game runs flawlessly at 1280x800 (the crash occurred at all resolutions starting with 640x480, 800x600, etc). (and I'm still using AVG free)

I'm now playing through Episode 2.

Even Lost Coast ran at 60fps during the stress test at 1280x800 widescreen.

Enjoy!
 
The PagedPoolSize trick works! I set it to the 192m value, so you don't necessarily have to crank it up to a higher value. Probably best not to if you don't have a lot of onboard memory.

Also, I find the running the game in Window mode works really well.

3.2GHz,400MHzFSB,1 Gig, ATI 9800Pro 128MB

Give the original poster a medal. :bounce:
 
Tried it and I still get the crash. No noticeable difference in behavior.

This is starting to become extremely frustrating.
 
what exatly doyou type in the box when you have the hexidecimal setting? i tried it but i nearly killed my computer. it didnt even start the games
 
okay, but befor i do it, what do you actualy type in the box? Do you just copy and paste one of the numbers into the box, press "ok" and restart the computer?
 
I really dont want to keep posting on this, but does anyone know how to fix this problem for Windows Vista? I WOULD REALLY LIKE TO KNOW!!! Please HELP!!!

P.S. I changed the pool page thing, and it still will not work.
 
Worked for HL2 for me too

OK guys, just a thank you really. I am late to the party with PC games and only just started playing HL 2 (from the Orange Box). I have been experiencing the dreaded looping audio bug constantly since I started playing (about every 10 minutes of play) and came across this thread.

Even though this was really about the Team Fortress problems, they sounded similar enough that I thought I would give it a shot.

I tried increasing the PagePoolSize to 384MB and saw a good imporvement. There is still a slight stutter now and then, but none of the 30s lock ups with looping audio that I previously had.

I am running a downloaded (Steam) version of HL2 on Vista Home Prem with all the latest updates etc. on a Dell Inspiron 1520 with a GeForce 8600M GT



So if any others are also still finding difficulties with HL2 it is worth giving this a shot.

When I get to Ep 1 and Ep 2 are the problems fixed in those games now?


thanks
 
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