*CRASH* The memory could not be 'read' error, for HL2 and CS:S

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Hmm 2 error messages.

"Failed to set video mode - resetting to defaults. Game will now restart with new video settings"

HL2 then starts in a windo when I go to run I get:-
"The instruction at xxxxxxxx etc could not be "read".

I haven't played HL2 for about 3 weeks but it use to run perfectly.

2800+ ATI9700 (Omega 12.4 Beta) GN400 Pro, IGB
RAM.

I'll change to ATI's drivers and the fix and see if that fixes it.
 
Do you speak DOMINATOR's english ?

To people who have difficulties to understang DOMINATOR's Front-End-Tongue, here is a Profane-Decyphered-Back-End sum-up :

1- COPY every files located in "..\steam\SteamApps\your_account\Half-life 2\bin" into "..\steam\SteamApps\account_login\Half-life 2"

2- COPY every files and directories located in "..\steam\SteamApps\account_login\Half-life 2" (except the BIN directory) into "..\steam\SteamApps\account_login\Half-life 2\bin"

NOTE : since you put all files of the original bin directory in its parent directory in step 1, you will be logically asked if you want to overwrite these files when doing step 2 : just answer YES to ALL.

Yes, it's utterly odd. But yes, it seems to work.

Asga
 
hl2dm works fine, and i tried even cpy pasting the contents of the hl2dm bin folder. i guess everyone the above doesn't work for is just s.o.l. until valve releases the first patch.
 
I also have this problem. It occurs at completely randoms times when running half-life 2 as well as other applications like world of warcraft, as well as mozilla firefox, and windows explorer. I searched around on google and found some forum with some guy who had the error alot while browsing the internet. Some tech guys kept giving him loads of suggestions, but to no avail. However, what I found interesting was at the bottom of the thread, he posted that he had solved his own problem. He said "It was apprently caused by a rouge extension that loaded itself into memory and did some wacky stuff." there were no posts after that... :flame: ...so if anyone can make sense of this vagueness, it may very well lead to the answer to our problems.
 
i found the fix...not only did i have the memory read only problem..but i had the blue screen of death, the game just exiting, and my computer shutting off....the thing i did was take out one ram chip...and it was fine. i never had a problem with my chip before so i just took the 512 chip out and replaced it with another one and it runs perfectly
 
alisgood2 said:
i found the fix...not only did i have the memory read only problem..but i had the blue screen of death, the game just exiting, and my computer shutting off....the thing i did was take out one ram chip...and it was fine. i never had a problem with my chip before so i just took the 512 chip out and replaced it with another one and it runs perfectly
Click to expand...

Thanks for proving me right that all these idiots blaming Valve for their own stupidity are buying bad RAM. You had the intelligence to question your own hardware, and solved the problem.
 
This worked for me.

I had read about a couple of people that had problems with ram timing etc. I had just purchased 512 extra ram to bring my rig up to 1Gb but HL2 kept crashing every 3 to 15 min. I took out the extra 512 and it has been stable since. The ram was cheap ram and I'm going to bring it back. One thing you might try is to reduce your ram to 512 if you have extra and see if the game will run. Good luck.

Pete Temple
 
Not the same...

HalfLife2Addict said:
Thanks for proving me right that all these idiots blaming Valve for their own stupidity are buying bad RAM. You had the intelligence to question your own hardware, and solved the problem.
Click to expand...

Addict...Appreciate the input, but I dont agree that this is the problem all the way around.

I ran MemTest with 0 errors, and have suffered this problem quite a bit. If it were bad RAM in all the cases, then the other fixes that have worked would not.

I think you are right for some folks, but not all. Be nice! :cheers:
 
Hey im having this same problem on counterstrike source in multiplayer whenever i go to join agame and its loading it does this. I have a brand new labtop. but on my old computer it works fine (which is not a labtop)
how can i test the memory and lower it?
 
Holy Moses!

+mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1

Whoever figured out the above...YOU ARE MY HERO! My game works now!!!! Im so so so so happy!

Minus a small audio problem, Im runnin like a champ!

Thanks!
 
AMD Athlon 1333mhz (not overclocked)
ATI Radeon 9550 256mb latest beta Catalyst
384mb ram
Sound Blater Live X-Gamer 5.1
80gig hdd
Win XP Pro SP2


I got this game last week. After encountering the 1335 installation error and solving it, I started a game. Playing through the beginning with medium/high settings at 800/600 seemed to be going great until the game started the loading sequence for another section near the end of the first chapter. My computer crashed hard, rebooting immediatly with no error message or BSOD. Now this is where it started getting really weird. When windows reloaded I was no longer able to connect to the internet. I tried restarting and shutting down completely with no luck. I checked my cable modem and network which was working fine. Then I loaded up STEAM and started checking out the options I noticed an option that loads steam automatically on startup was enabled. Since installing HL2 was the only major thing I had done that day I decided to uncheck this setting and give it a go. Sure enough on the next reboot everything worked fine. So go figure...

Anyways I reload the game get back to where it crashed before and continue on through the teleport sequence and all that.. game working fine so far. Somewhere into Water Hazard my game crashes again, but this time with the well known Memory read error. Now that I have something to work with I do a google search and came up with this forum topic. I spend a few hours reading through the entire topic. I am glad that I was not the only one with this problem, in fact it really hit me when i noticed that over 60000 people took the time to read it. That right there tells you something. So after reading all of this I was kinda stumped.. I mean theres so many possible fixes and some of it seemed quite drastic, like: Removing SP2, moving memory chips around etc.. people replacing all sorts of hardware only to still have the same problem. So instead I do nothing for the time being. The next day I load up the game play through some more of WaterHazard until I get the memory read error again. This time I restart my computer when windows reloads it gives me a message that my sound card failed to initialize. This has never happened to me before and I presume it had something to do with the HL2 crash, though I don't know what.

After turning off the computer letting it sit for a few mins I restart it and everything loads fine. I click on HL2 icon, Steam initializes a HL2 game update. Update completes uneventfully. Game starts and I reload my savegame. I play for awhile until about midway through Ravenholm, the computer resets itself during a new loading sequence just like it did the first time. By this time im kinda getting pissed to say the least. But at least unlike more unfortunate people I have been able to progress in the game and though I get the errors they arnt so frequent as to completely ruin the fun.

Well the next time I tried running HL2 nothing happened.. nothing at all.. tried restarting the computer, shutting down completely everything.. but it doesnt do anything. After all the trouble I had installing the game, a reinstall does not seem very appealing. I decide for the hell of it even though I did a defragement of the hdd a couple days before getting HL2 I should check my HDD. The windows defragger informs me that yes my hdd is fragmented and that I should defrag. I let it do its thing then I tell my computer to do a scandisk the next time i restart. I shut down for the night.

Upon restart the following morning the scandisk initializes and indeed found a few file errors to be fixed. After thats done windows reloads and crossing my fingers I double click my HL2 icon. To my delight steam connects and HL2 loads up. I open my save game and start playing again. I get passed the loading spot where it crashed before. Then i play for about 12 hours that day without a crash, only taking breaks for the can and food.. im hooked by now and cant stop. During this time I dont shut the game down at all. Finnally I'm too tired to continue and shut it down for the night.

Next day im itching for more.. load up HL2 play for about 20mins or so then the dreaded memory read error appears again. I wasnt sure what to do now but I really wanted to keep playing. But I was curious how i managed to play the entire day before without an error. I decide to open defrag again. I analyze the HDD, windows informs me that I do not need to defragment my drive. But I click the report anyways. It tells me that several HL2 files are fragmented. So I do the defrag again as well as a scandisk which did not encounter any errors this time around. After I reload HL2 I am able to play error free again right up to the end of the game.

So as far as im concerned, In my case it is the Game not my hardware that caused this problem. Though i could be wrong i doubt it. No other software of mine has given me this kind of trouble that I can remember. I have worked with computers for at least 12 years. I am confident that my hardware is functioning correctly. In the end im really glad that I made it through the game. It was a lot of fun despite the errors. I just hope they can sort it out better for HL3. By then I should have a significantly better system.
 
I Got It Fixed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I GOT IT FIXED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG
I can't believe that's finally gone...

I Have:
Amd Athlon Xp overclocked from 1800 to 2200....
512 Ram
Radeon 9500 overclocked to 9700

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So my friend told me to change in Bios
External clock to "NUMBER - 5".... I HAD 200, changed it to 195.


Everything is good now. :smoking:
PS. IF ANYONE Gets it FIXED by USING MY WAY PLEASE REPLAY HERE!
 
Ridin24s did u find a solution yet im having the exact same problem
 
Solution?

I've been running the game flawlessly most of the time, however it gives the same crash that the rest of you get. (memory could not be read etc etc.,..).

This is (I'm 99% sure of this) a sound(card) and/or memory issue. The crash (on my system) is triggered whenever I experience a ram-leakage. I've so far been unable to determine the location of the leakage, but I don't think it is in the game, because I experience the same leak in Everquest 2 as well. (I haven't noticed any other games crashing due to ram-leakage, but that's just because I have a gig of ram and those two games are the only major ram-guzzlers I'm playing at the moment).

In EQ2 the game starts lagging like mad whenever the leak gets too big, and then it crashes about 2-300MB's of swapfile-usage later (yeah I know, stupid time-measurement, but it's the only one that describes it well enough). In HL2 I get the same thing, except it crashes somewhat faster. I do get the loopy sound-bug, but it doesn't always crash the game, rather it shows that the computer is clogging up. A quick reboot will leave the game running flawlessly until I'm out of ram again, although at this point I don't need to reboot, only restart the game, thus freeing up ram and swapfile. If the leak gets too bad however, a reboot is needed.

The problem with applications crashing to desktop and giving error messages when you (almost) completely run out of resources are not limited to just this game, but CS:S/HL2/Source seems to be more sensitive to it. Also I get similar crashes whenever my soundcard runs very slow (audigy 2 plat ex) on other applications, including but not limited to winamp, audio-editing programs, media players etc..

I'm not done testing, but so far it appears to me (haven't noticed any kind of deviation from this pattern so far during the two weeks I've had the problem) that it crashes once I run out of resources one way or the other, in the form of ram, vram, gpu-power or soundcard-resources. In short, if your system clogs up, you're screwed.

Also, if my computer is turned on for prolonged periods of time, I notice a slight ram-leak in all programs connected to the internet, or communicating on the network in some way. firefox, ie, torrent-clients, p2p-clients, download-managers etc.. all seem to eat ram at a slow and steady pace. I've used an onboard gbps-card (epox 8kda3+ mobo with nforce3), a usb wlan-dongle (Cnet, 54mbps) and a pci wlan-card (also cnet, 54mbps). all give the same result, so it's not a network-card issue. might be a driver/software-issue. Summa summarum, if they eat too much ram/swapfile then a reboot is required before I can start the game.

In the end it boils down to it being several possible causes to the crash, but in most cases they are related to a lack of system resources in some form. Note that some of the posters here may be getting crashes that appear similar, but are independent of the main part of the crashes we are experiencing, so not all reports should be taken as solid leads.


A good place to start for most people is to firstly run a complete virs and ad/spyware-scan of their computers. Then continue to clean up unnecessary stuff running in the background, such as old an unused software.

For those running windows xp, you can press Start->Run and then type in "msconfig" (without quotes) to see which servies and programs are launcher when you log on to windows. I'm not sure whether there is a similar tool in windows 2000, but it should be possible to view the same stuff using the tools in the control panel (that goes for xp as well, mind you. it can be found in "administrative tools"). Check to see which services are starting (checking the box labeled "hide microsoft services" is useful, as these are generally essential and/or useful to keep all software running correctly, with only a select few exceptions).
Remove unnecessary stuff from here. Then, do the same thing in the "startup" tab in msconfig. In most cases there is a LOT of unwanted and unnecessary stuff in the startup-tab, especially if you're using a shared computer.

Secondly, (approach this with caution if you're not experienced with this sort of thing) enter the BIOS and clean up some of the settings there, such as disabling floppy-controllers if you don't have a floppy-drive installed. Disable onboard soundchips, lan-chips, s-ata and raid-controllers (only stuff you're not currently using, of course). Then check the hardware-monitor, if such a thing can be found in your BIOS, to look at the system temperature. You'll be wanting to have the temperature as low as possible, and not exceeding 55 degrees celsius unless you have one insane cooling solution (meaning the temperature won't rise much, even under high system-load).

Also, ram and pci-timing can cause many odd errors. Checked with creative labs customer support on this earlier, and their soundcards (and most likely every other out there) will not work properly if the timing settings are too fast, due to the soundcard not having enough time to handle various data. And as someone pointed out earlier, make sure your soundcard (and preferrably all other gaming-related cards in your computer) are inserted into any of the three first pci-slots, starting with number 1 and working your way downwards.

I'm not going to bother going into more details regarding bios-settings and system-optimizing here since many others have made guides for these that are more comprehensible and useful, just look around on the web and you'll find a lot of useful hints and tips.

Ok, time to sum up: CS:S/HL2/Source-crashes seem to occur when system resources are nearing nil. There are of course other things that will cause the game to crash, and a good place to start looking is the microsoft knowledge base, as it actually contains a lot of useful info on how to optimize various windows-applications such as the firewall, DEP (data execution-prevention), directx, performance monitor (for hunting down ram-leaks and the such) etc etc.

The following are a few useful sites to go to for information on optimizing and fixing both the game and windows in general:

http://www.tweakguides.com <--Should be self-explanatory
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;en-us;KBHOWTO <--Microsoft Knowledge base
http://steampowered.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/steampowered.cfg/php/enduser/entry.php <--Steam/Source Trouble-shooter/FAQ

PS: I will be doing some minor hardware-adjustments and system-tweaking later, and will try to update with the results when I have time.

EDIT:
My hardware-setup is as follows:
Epox 8KDA3+ Motherboard
AMD64 XP3000+ cpu running at 2.1Ghz
2x512MB PC2700 DDR (TwinMOS)
Gainward Geforce 6800 Ultra/2400 GS (256MB)
3x120GB 7200rpm IDE-Drives
2x200GB 7200rpm S-ATA-drives (Raid 0)
A Wacom tablet (installed after the error appeared, therefore irrelevant) connected via USB
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 Platinum Ex
500W PSU (Can't remember the type. A bit small, but it's sufficient)
NEC 3500-AG (Firmware is flashed to 2.18, region-free)
Asus slim external Combo DVD/CD-RW drive (unsure of the model. the silvery grey, designed like a regular cd jewel-case)

Software-setup (limited list, naturally):
Windows XP Pro, SP2 (all patches installed)
AVG Antivirus, free-edition
SpyGuard and SpywareBlaster (made by javacoolsoftware)
Daemon Tools 3.47
Radmin v2.2
NetLimiter v1.30
Mozilla Firefox 1.0 with Google-bar 0.9.0.30, DownThemAll 0.9.4 and AdBlock v.5 d2
Winamp 5.0.5 (running 99% of the time)

All drivers for all hardware is patched to latest version from manufacturer, excluding graphics-card which uses the 67.02 beta-drivers (though still from nvidia). BIOS is flashed to the 6A61CPAA (10/22/2004)-version.
 
evilandie said:
+mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1

Whoever figured out the above...YOU ARE MY HERO! My game works now!!!! Im so so so so happy!

Minus a small audio problem, Im runnin like a champ!

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Same here...Mine is now working fine...a few audio problems that I can deal with.... :cheers:
 
hi,
i have been looking for a way to fkix it for 2day's and i found the solution for half-life to game crash. :imu:
:eek:

Here is the fix:

First location:

Right click your Half Life 2 icon on your desktop (the one you would normally double-click to launch the game). Then click Properties. Click the Shortcut Tab. In the line labeled Target, you will see something like this, depending on where you put the program when you installed it:

"C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe" -applaunch 22

Copy and paste the following AFTER the above line:

+mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1

Be sure there is a space between -applaunch 22 and +mat

Click save and you are ready to go.

Second location:

From the Steam Play Games Menu, right click on Half Life 2. Choose Properties, then click Launch Options. Paste the following in the box.

+mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1

Click Ok and you are ready to go.

Do the same fix for Half Life 2 Deathmatch and Counter Strike Source.

Offline and Online Mulitplayer modes will should all work now.
ok i found out it doesnt work for counterstrike source or half-life 2: deathmatch. that gets real agrivating becouse i want to play counter strike well any way have fun with half-life (be glad u didnt wast $54 thank god)
 
anyone please help me

ok people i have had this problem sice i bought the game 2 days ago i have spent about 10 hours reading and trying every little trick that i have found on this web page and others and have hit the wall i even went out and bought a new ram chip. still dowsnt work !!!! i am the end of my teather!!!! :flame:
here is the error 0x012765f0 i cant even getinto the game. it frys just after the valve logo it looks like it is going the start then bam i get the memory error if anyone els was able to fix this specific error please help me out!
i can play 2 maps that come with the death match just fine but i cant get into anyone elses game!!! also i can log into a game playing CS sorce but it crashes!!! :flame:

system info
SOYO k7v dragon plus!
athlon xp 1800
512 pny memmory(just bought it)
radion 8500 all in wonder dv
direct x 9.0c
windows xp profesional SP2
 
Possible Solution!?!

Ok guys this seemed to work for me, simply run HL2 in a window and it doesnt crash anymore. If the game crashes when you apply this setting ingame (like it did for me), use the registry editor. click start/run type regedit then go to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Valve/Source/hl2/Settings then change the screenwindowed string to the value 1. Hope this helps people. (note that you can only use low resolutions ie: 600x480 in windowed mode)

- Best Of Luck To You All -- F3JY --
 
Usually what happens for me is:

I get a message that says "failed to open models/gman.vid" or "models/breen.vid" and then it gives the memory error crash.
 
We are at 61 friggin pages valve!!!!! 61!, for the love of god get that patch out.
 
Guys im 99.9999 % sure this is a preload issue. Even after i reformated my comp, i DLed off Steam and i still get the error. for me the error comes at random times for all source games

AMD Athlon XP +3000
ATI Radeon 9600pro
1gb ddr ram
Panda antivirus
 
no i wasent able to get the window thing to wrk the load up screen is still blury and really zoomed in!!!!!
 
I dont think any tweak will fix this, valve needs to get their act together.
 
I fluked out and found a fix for my system. After reading this forum and trying everything I could, and failing; all I'd get was the stutter crash memory error. At the Steam site support section I read you could relax your ram in the bios AND moving your sound card to a slot closer to the AGP port might help. So, I started screwing with the cas settings in my bios until my machine locked up and wouldn't reboot. I opened my tower and reset the CMOS and moved my Audigy to the slot next to AGP.(since I was in there anyways) When I power up I was forced into my BIOS setup where everything is at default. I had to set: date, time, boot device sequence, agp fastwrites enabled, p&p aware o/s yes, graphics agp, irq to pci vga no, and audio disabled. Everything else is at default. Then I reinstall drivers for Audigy(3 updates and 3 reboots). I haven't crashed yet(2days later). It used to crash every 2-10 minutes at a scene change. Now when I get to one, I get a short stutter but the game continues on. My last session was over 2 hours and no crash. Was my BIOS that bad that it needed a reset?or did the Audigy move fix it?
NOTE: My game startup options have NOT been altered (i.e. -heapsize... +map... +snd_async...) and I haven't tried it on CS or DM yet.
Hope this helps.
 
:(

I was hoping I could get an answer, but reading a few of the latter posts, it seems that there's still no clear solution.

Maybe some of you have tried this, but I added '+mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1' in my Counter Strike Source shortcut target, and executed that, and no errors so far. Unfortunately it hasn't work for Half Life 2, for me anyways.
 
Im really confused. Another forum recommended me this topic, but theres like 60 pages.

So one question..

IS there a method that can solve this that works on everyones computer?

It sux even more, cause I just bought new comp:

Dell, Pentium 4
512 mb ram
2.9 ghz
80 gigs
 
i sorted out my problem i found that both of my two 256 stick of ram did not work toghter properly to play half life i took 1 out and it was fine
 
ok guys i think this should work it worked for me and many others too especially the dell users

-fullscreen +mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1

if it works then try running it in fullscreen by typing

+mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1

by the way for those who dont know what to do with this you have to got to hl2-properties-launch options and type it there.

i hope this helps ;)
 
I'm getting this too, only it seems that (unlike most other posts) it _only_ happens at random times for me. That is even worse, b/c I never know when it's about to shit itself.

WinXP SP2
nVidia GeForce 4 440mx
*onboard soundcard*
384 MB RAM

(P.S. It would not surprise me at all if SP2 has something to do with it, many ppl say it is very buggy in certain instances esp. with games)
 
i get it at random times aswell, tried the command line options and no joy.
 
c0vert l1nux said:
I'm getting this too, only it seems that (unlike most other posts) it _only_ happens at random times for me. That is even worse, b/c I never know when it's about to shit itself.

WinXP SP2
nVidia GeForce 4 440mx
*onboard soundcard*
384 MB RAM

(P.S. It would not surprise me at all if SP2 has something to do with it, many ppl say it is very buggy in certain instances esp. with games)
Click to expand...

I know for a fact it's not SP2. I too crash randomly. But I was getting the same amount of errors before i installed SP2.
 
sapomaster said:
i sorted out my problem i found that both of my two 256 stick of ram did not work toghter properly to play half life i took 1 out and it was fine
Click to expand...

Can someone tell me (in moron speak) step by step how to do this?
 
any one els getting the error at the start up screen 0x012765f0 refernced memory at 0x0127650f the memory could not be read ??? i am just wondering if i am the only one with this number. i cant even get into the game i have yet to be able to play it i can play cs and deathmatch just fine this is really odd
 
Sometimes I get it at the startup, other times when trying to load a saved game.
 
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