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

[philage]

I also get the annoying memory error, and like someone else mentioned, its at totaly random times, 1 day i could play for 4 hours straight without a crash, the next day, 3 crashes within 1 hour, with the same settings for system and game ??? I get the crashes on both hl2 and css, dont know about hl2dm as i dont play it.

Now, I have been using/building/tweaking pc`s for many years and playing games for even longer, and in my experience have never come across a problem as random as this on any system i have ever owned. I have read about other people having issues with various games/systems but I have never really had any bother. Along came hl2, and completly changed that though.

So, having the knowledge that there are mases of people who dont get this problem, most of them using default settings (the average gaming joe does not tweak configs), I set about getting completely paranoid about my system and trying many things to ease my pain, and fix the damn game. System wise i have individualy altered cpu multiplier/fsb, changed the memory timings to more relaxed settings, raised and lowered all system voltages, changed agp settings, introduced more airflow into/out of the pc, result ? completely random crashes. Software wise i have tried fresh windows xp instalations with just drivers and steam, different drivers, every hl2 config edit I read about or had knowledge about, different pagefile settings, and still random crashes.

There are still a few things I need to try though, the main one being ram combinations. I am reading more and more posts about people removing a stick of ram and voila ! the game is fixed, of course there are many fixes people post that work for them but none for me so far, but I beleive this is worth trying, it would make sense that it could work as the game is very system intensive, and removing an important, but not necessary stick of ram, changes the way your system handles memory (obviously, as there is one stick less). So, im gonna try it when im off work in a couple of days and see what happens, will update in this thread with any positive results or loss of sanity.

System specs...

Abit NF7s rev2
Athlon @3200+
GeForce 6800 Ultra
1 gig ram @400mhz
SBlive.

Good luck people, I feel your pain.....

 

[phuket101]

Posting me experience here...

well, i had one stick of 512 RAM that was PC2700 Mushkin. when i got HL2 and played it worked great, besides stuttering (which i can, in fact, live with). when i upgraded my RAM however (by throwing in a 512 PC3200 stick of Mushkin) the crashes started happening. anywhere from instantly to 10 seconds later i'd be starring at my desktop instead of the level i just loaded. and obviously other people have a similar problem here.
i figured i'd wait til to the holiday's and ask my brother for another stick of PC3200 as the problem seemed to be the differing speeds in the RAM. i had no way to underclock it with my current BIOS settings, so i figured this was the only way. unfortunately even though both sticks are 512 PC3200 of the exact same model even, i still crash. how frustrating is that?

i can't pull a stick of RAM every time i want to play HL2, thats getting to be a little of an unreasonable request. i love value for making a kickass game, and through the unending torrents of crap from hackers to whinners to plain bored shit-talkers (tehy lied 2 us abot HL2!), but i just want to be able to play my HL2 that i paid 50 bucks for. shucks, i really thought this would solve the problem :/

KT600 Soyo Dragon Plus v2.0
AMD 2500+ Athlon XP
512mb PC3200 Mushkin x 2 = 1.0gb RAM
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro (non beta-drivers)
Windows XP SP1
Audiogy Sound Card

 

[Leonardo1]

Latest nVidia drivers 66.93, latest hl2 patch from shteam.... big crash! memory error! blue scrn of death....

[-] December 22, 2004 (current release)

Changes/Additions

Fixed sound stuttering problems caused by thread contention in sound system

Sp2 causing problems playing a game doesn't sound right imo that's bs and if it was the case uninstalling sp2 to play a buggy game is stupid.

Windows XP SP2
AMD Athlon XP 2100+
Asus A7V333 - Raid VIA® KT333
1.5GB Crucial DDR PC2700
Abit Siluro GeforceFX 5900 OTES
*2x* IBM 120GXP UDMA100 82.3GB Raid
*2x* IBM 120GXP UDMA100 123.5GB

 

[madcat75]

Why would I want to get rid of 512mb of ram to fix this game? IMO it makes no sense...

 

[afrak]

hey i hear you on that one i just went out and bought a 2700 ddr rams but my old computer will only suport 2100 so my bios colcked it down to 133 FSB (this was the only flavor of ddr that anystore around here sold!!! it sucks to live in minneapolis) (and it is cold so very cold) anyway i am still stumped tryed heepsizeing that didnt work if only we could trace the sorce of each erroer they seem to be starndard erroers that everyone is getting just diffferent addresses

 

[madcat75]

come on valve WTF is going on..... fix this shit or else I wont buy HL3! Or any other of your games!

 

[Varsity]

Works, apparently...

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=66038

 

[madcat75]

lol bullcrap

 

[NapalmAndFriends]

Let's try to track down some hardware/software that we share.

Everyone getting errors running Service Pack 2?
Virus protection? (I have norton)
AMD Processor?
64 bit?
etc.

Yes!! Exactly!

 

[Dr. Bucket]

For most people, including myself, the problem appears to be RAM. I ran memtest on my system a few times and found that one of my sticks of 512 mb ram was indeed F'd up. I don't know who to blame here, but i have to blame someone. Is it Dell's fault (as if i need yet another reason to despise dell)? Or maybe its valve that's corrupting my RAM. My computer worked fine before i bought hl2, now it crashes in valve games as well as World of Warcraft, and any other RAM-intensive application, i'm assuming. Until someone can make some connections here, it looks like i must settle for 512 mb of ram and a loss of 70 bucks.

 

[Varsity]

HL2 accesses hardware through Windows. It cannot damage stuff that isn't already on it's last legs.

 

[zeratuhl]

Possible fix.

Oyh! can anyone else try this and confirm/deny it's effectiveness?

Right click my computer, go to properties, click the advanced tab, go to virtual memory settings and increase the maximum size of the pagefile. Have the mininum to somewhere between 1x and 1.5x your total ram, and the maximum 2x.

1: Somewhere in windows (and I'll be damned if I don't find out where sometime soon) there's a major ram leak. I think it might be caused by the jscript.dll file seeing as microsoft has confirmed a ram leak caused by that file if you create and destroy large amounts of process threads.
2: Low amounts of free ram / high usage of swapfile = instant memory error on my system. If I run low on ram / swapfile while playing, BOOM! The game crashes. Increasing the size of my swapfile seems to have more or less cured the problem. Haven't had any problems so far, and I've been running smoothly for 2 days now. Ram timings at the moment are:

T (RAS) 7
T (RCD) 3
T (RP) 3
(TwinMOS PC2700 DDR. 2x512MB)

And for those browsing quickly through the posts:


TRY INCREASING THE SWAPFILE SIZE! (sorry about caps, guys)


Please provide feedback on how well/bad this goes on your system.

Go a few posts back to see my complete hardware-setup.

 

[Leonardo1]

Free space 5.91 Drive C


Paging File Custom Size Drive C

Space available 8358mb

Min 2304mb

Max 3072mb

Recommended 2304mb

Currently allocated 2304mb

Virtual Memory gets used after all ram gets used up, valve claim this game requires @ min 256mb ram so it say's on the back of the jewel case which is a joke!

Windows XP SP2
AMD Athlon XP 2100+
Asus A7V333 - Raid VIA® KT333
1.5GB Crucial DDR PC2700
Abit Siluro GeforceFX 5900 OTES
*2x* IBM 120GXP UDMA100 82.3GB Raid
*2x* IBM 120GXP UDMA100 123.5GB

 

[Leonardo1]

Downloaded RivaTuner disabled AGP fast writes and AGP Sideband addressing the problem of it freezing up is gone..... for me it was the graphics card causing the problem.


Got it from www.guru3d.com tryed at first to disable fastwrites via nvidia options could not do it that way but rivatuner allows this.

 

[madcat75]

lol this thread will be 100 pages I bet before valve fixes it

 

[BaBIOHAZARD]

Steam error *memory could not be "read"*

Let's try to track down some hardware/software that we share.

Everyone getting errors running Service Pack 2?
Virus protection? (I have norton)
AMD Processor?
64 bit?
etc.

I am having the same error with CS:S, (memory could not be "read") it happens right before i join a server, i double click on the server and it loads about 75% then freezes, then that message appears on my desktop, it has somthing to do with low "virtual memory",..... when i started having this problem, i had the blasterworm virus on my comp, since my norton antivirus wont clean it up, i went to the extreme of doing the system recovery for windows xp, when i finished it, the first thing i installed was, ad-aware, spybot, then steam, *cs:s 1st: then cs1.6* when i tried to play cs:s, to my surprise it worked!, i didnt want to do anything to my comp so that cs:s wouldnt get ****ed up again, guess what... Since i have Windows automatic update, i updated my comp, then installed the xp:service pack #2, after i installed it, i had the same exact error..... Im guessing it has sumthing to do with thatr service pack but i really dont know tooo much about computers soo... i hope this can help fix the problem, i know how u guys feel, im pissed off, i pay for these damn games and i dont even get to enjoy them....
:sniper: *STEAM+SERVICEPACK#2* :angry:

 

[madcat75]

SP2 has nothing to do with it

 

[amadpig]

I Give Up!!

I've tried just about everything thats been mentioned to fix these ****ing memory errors.

I've defragged, optimized, closed my eyes, copied files to & from Steam directories, used advanced start up options, increased swap file & virtual memory....the only thing left is to kick the crap of the PC & the %$#@ persons who released HL2 (I only play CSS), without FULLY testing & ironing ALL the bugs before we, the devoted gamers part with our hard earned to play what seems a great game....if you can last more than 10 mins before receiving errors....ARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!
:angry: .......feeling better now (till my next error)

But seriously, wtf is Valve doing about fixing this enormous problem experienced by soooooo many users??? hmmm? When is the patch going to be forthcoming?? hmmm?


Windows XP Home SP2
P4 3.06ghz
Geforce 4 Ti4200 128mb 8xAGP
1024mb DDR
GA-8PE800 M/Board
On board sound
and a pain in the *** game called CSS that doesn't work

 

[clarky003]

whyyyy, is HL2 such a memory hog... gah.. all this emphasis on getting top of the range radeon G cards,, when they should of been saying... 'you need specific memory types to play this game, nicely configured.. and you need fooking loads of it!..

well... bah

 

[amadpig]

I've tried just about everything thats been mentioned to fix these ****ing memory errors.

I've defragged, optimized, closed my eyes, copied files to & from Steam directories, used advanced start up options, increased swap file & virtual memory....

and this http://www.games-fusion.net/filedb/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=874 , didn't work for me ;( , but it might for someone else....whattya got to lose I say......hope it works for you. :cheers:

 

[NsTiG8r]

Background Processes

I was also experiencing the sound looping and crashing you all have written about. I went through my quick launch bar and disabled all un-neccesary processes one by one to determine if one was conflicting with HL2. It may be a coincidence but once I disabled DirectCD (Roxio product), HL2 has been running error free. My system specs:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+
1GB PC3200 Ram
MSI NEO FISR2 6702 MB
GeForce FX5900 Video
Onboard sound
WinXP (SP2)

Andy

 

[Uoy Dellik I]

i dont have any problems, i only get it when i spawn too much stuff,(like over 50 manhacks stuck together in garry's mod, or over 100 combine solidiers, which doesnt necessaryily crash, just makes the game lag) i think it has all to do with your ram/graphics, try updating all your junk in the comp, graphics card and sound. to me it looks like a geforce error.

BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.53GHz
Memory: 512MB RAM
Page File: 224MB used, 1025MB available
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: RADEON 9700 PRO
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
Chip type: RADEON 9700 AGP (0x4E44)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4E44&SUBSYS_00021002&REV_00
Display Memory: 128.0 MB
Current Mode: 1024 x 768 (32 bit) (60Hz)

 

[zeratuhl]

gfx card

Geforce has squat to do with it. People with radeon cards have been getting the exact same errors.

Read the error message again. It's a memory issue (possibly triggered by soundcard drvers/software issues, but I doubt it. looping sound just means the game lags, nothing more). Upgrade your ram, install more, fix ram leaks and/OR increase swapfile-size. Should work for most of you, though I've noticed there are several different errors that people have been posting here. I chose to increase swapfile. Poof! no more errors. I'm too poor to buy any more ram now for the next two weeks (payday, w00t!) to try the effect of increasing the amount of ram, but unless something seriously f*cked up is going on then that should have the same effect.

 

[skyice^]

i have found something that may be able to help, im trying it atm, it validates staems files... just read whats on the page and all will be revild

http://www.steampowered.com/index.php?area=news&id=351

 

[amadpig]

Upgrade your ram, install more, fix ram leaks and/OR increase swapfile-size.

I've got a gig of ram, don't need to install more, no ram leaks & I've increased the swapfile already to triple the amonut of ram I have....still getting errors.

I dunno what is going on, but I've had the game for about a 6 weeks now & still haven't finished a game & left when i want, always get errors that make me either have to reboot or ctrl+alt+del to end the process....I've tried everything.

 

[zeratuhl]

Hmm

I've got a gig of ram, don't need to install more, no ram leaks & I've increased the swapfile already to triple the amonut of ram I have....still getting errors.

I dunno what is going on, but I've had the game for about a 6 weeks now & still haven't finished a game & left when i want, always get errors that make me either have to reboot or ctrl+alt+del to end the process....I've tried everything.

If you get errors that force you to ctrl+alt+del to end the process, then you're not getting the same error as me. Mine gives (gave, rather) a memory error upon loading the game, then crashing to desktop, or simply crashed to desktop while in-game. If the game freezes for no apparent reason, I'd suggest looking in the troubleshooter on steampowered.com. Also, I've noticed that if several instances of rundll32.exe is running, it can create some insane lag (which more or less locks up the process that is affected by making it jump to 99% cpu-time and staying there). Can't remember what exactly caused it, but killing all but one copy of rundll32.exe (in the task managers process list) will usually fix it.

 

[Lono]

My brother had the "SYSTEM CRASHES AND REBOOTS AT THE SAME SPOT IN THE GAME" problem.

I read a few people that said moving their sound card closer to the AGP slot fixed this problem. Sure enough, he did this and it SOLVED THE PROBLEM!!! Try it, its one of the easier fixes to attempt.

 

[amadpig]

If the game freezes for no apparent reason, I'd suggest looking in the troubleshooter on steampowered.com. Also, I've noticed that if several instances of rundll32.exe is running, it can create some insane lag (which more or less locks up the process that is affected by making it jump to 99% cpu-time and staying there). Can't remember what exactly caused it, but killing all but one copy of rundll32.exe (in the task managers process list) will usually fix it.

Thnx zeratuhl, I'll give this a go. :E

I must say that 98% of my problems are the memory errors, only every so often I get the freeze which allows the ctrl+alt+del. But hey, I'll give anythiing a go just to be able to play this game without interuption.

I'll post it if I find something that works.
<).."(>
(..)~ )

 

[gorcorps]

SP2 has nothing to do with it

It has SOMETHING to do with it. It was working fine, then I installed sp2 to fix another game. That worked but now hl2 doesn't start. We seem to have another memory leak with this sp2, now we have to find how to fix it. But sp2 does have an effect with some people.

 

[Phisionary]

[size=+2]MY [/size]1000[size=+2]th POST![/size] Yay!

Maybe to some that means nothing since it's 1/13th of what you have but to me this is big....

And why post here? 'Cause I've finally played HL2.

I was very very very very very pissed when I bought it and couldn't play it (it was only a week and a half ago, but still).

I got a ' memory could not be "read" ' error, first in CS:S. I was overclocking from 200 to 215, CPU and RAM. Ran doom3, cpu burn-in and memtest86+ very well at this speed.

But... setting it to stock fixed it for CS:S.

Then I ran half-life 2.... I got myself all ready... ready for uninterupted experiancing of this supposedly amazing game.

Intro, "I didn't see you get on...", look a combine... *freeze*

furious. :flame:

well, long story short, I tried most of the tweaks and command-line options and such to no avail. I recently tried the -nosound option and it ran for almost 20 minutes, and did not crash. I couldn't play for much longer becuase I hadn't gotten very far, and didn't want to spoil the game at all. I assusmed that sound was the problem (it very well might be), and looked for the fixes. I replaced my 'Miles Sound System' drivers in the half-life2/bin directory (backing up the old), and tried it. No dice. very very very very very dissapointed.

Eventually, I UNDERCLOCKED my memory. It is a reasonably good 2-2-2-5 T1 latency DDR3200 memory. I run at 3-4-4-8 T1 ATM, still at stock speeds.

THE GAME RAN!

Awesome..... I played to ravenholm, although it finally did crash with the ever so familiar memory error. I suspect the cause may have been different, though I'm not sure. I'll describe it just in case anyone else knows it....

The first craqshes I got, the game sound went into a repeating loop, the visuals stopeed, a short wait, and a windows 'error' sound. Wait another second, another 'error' sound, and the mouse cursor showed up. If you pressed any buttons then you could hear windows sounds in the background (I somehow turned on 'speech assist' once when pressing buttons and it would audibly tell me key names ). But, then you wouldn't be able to close the game. If you press 'enter' (and only 'enter'), then it would close the game window and allow you to restart without a reboot. I'm assusming a hidden dialogue was open and the 'OK' button was default selected. And 'alt-tabbing' take the focus off and you cant get it back.

Anyway, the last crash I got, the 'memory' error actually popped up, and the game closed in a slightly different way. I dunno exactly, luckily I've only gotten it once. Anyway. I played for 5 hours without a problem. That game is an absolute ****ing blast! That airboat rules!

I do view this as a 'Valve' problem, btw. A game that will not run on a system that runs everything else perfectly, well, the fault is in the game... and before you say 'it's a hardware problem' or 'it's a driver problem', well, bullshit. Patching is often to provide a 'workaround,' something that will circumvent the issue. You can circumvent some problems in software, and even some problems in hard-ware. And since this seems to be a big issue with source games on otherwise stable systems, I believe this is valves bug, anyway (btw, this is a standard error message and can have many causes, so I'm not saying that some might not be hardware error, etc). The retail cost of several thousand affected gamers should be reason enough to get it fixed.

Anyway... whatever. Gonna play HL2 now I think.

 

[tranCendenZ]

For those who don't have the HL2 stuttering this is what it can sound like:

http://www.reflectonreality.com/images/hl2stutter.mp3
(copy and paste into browser window to get permission)

First run through is loading a game and playing a portion of the board for the first time, then dying. Second part is reloading the saved game after I die and playing the same portion of the board. Note how there is much less stutter the second time.

My specs:
Intel Pentium4 3.2C
Intel D865PERLL motherboard
1GB dual channel Crucial RAM
BFG 6800GT latest drivers (67.03)
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz latest drivers (4193)
Seagate 7200.7 160GB SATA Hard Drive (7200rpm/8mb cache)
Windows XP SP2
Half Life 2 latest patch as of today 1/9/05
no virii, spyware, etc, all unneeded processes terminated

Pretty annoying to get stutter like that for a system with these specs.

Also got the memory read error once back in Nov.

 

[Dominant1]

i noticed that when i turned off my overclocking on my cpu this error has now disappeared. The word is half life 2 is super sensative to overclocking. check www.tweakguides.com
i can run the game at 1600x1200x32 at 4x aa and 8x af with no problems at all.

 

[amadpig]

I've tried just about everything thats been mentioned to fix these ****ing memory errors.

I've defragged, optimized, closed my eyes, copied files to & from Steam directories, used advanced start up options, increased swap file & virtual memory....

WOO HOO!!!

OMG I've just finished a 2 hr session on CSS, my first ever uninterrupted session since I bought the game 6-8 weeks ago, how chuffed am I :E

I've tried everything BUT, removing a stick of my 512 PC333 RAM. I'm down to 512 for the moment, but never been happier

Guess what I'll be doing on the weekend....getting the timing on my RAM fixed.

I got the hint from http://steampowered.custhelp.com/cg...HNvcnQ9JnBfcm93X2NudD0yNjcmcF9wYWdlPTE*&p_li=
if your interested......worked for me :thumbs:

Signing off to play a 3 hr session this time....good luck with your memory problems. :cheers:

 

[michaelsil1]

WOO HOO!!!


I've tried everything BUT, removing a stick of my 512 PC333 RAM. I'm down to 512 for the moment, but never been happier

Guess what I'll be doing on the weekend....getting the timing on my RAM fixed.

:cheers:

Are you saying removing a stick of RAM helped?

 

[potatohead]

I was having the same problem(s), here's what worked for me.

First of my specs:
3200+ 754pin
asus a8v deluxe mb
couple of wd2000jb's
a wd800jb
lite-on dvd/cdrw drives
gainward vivo 5900fx ultra
256x2 pc3200 golden dragon
ect

I would also like to mention that it runs Doom3, and all the other newer games without a problem at all. I was really disapointed when HL2 kept crashing and/or locking up my computer. CSS was doing the same thing. I tried a lot of what has been posted here, nothing really worked. Everyone keeps hinting at a memory problem. So here's what I did:

1) turned of bank interleaving (in bios)
2) limited the memory to 333 mhz

Anyways I have been running hl2, and css for about 2 weeks now without a SINGLE crash/lockup. Let me know if this helps anyone. GL. (also I think bank interleaving isnt part of the problem, so you can prob. leave that on) Since then I have also OC-ed the memory on the video card, and hl2/css still run w/o crashing.

 

[Marx]

I tried removing one of my 512 sticks and booted the game up, i could play longer then i usually can and thought it fixed my crash problem but nope, still crashed on me.

 

[amadpig]

Are you saying removing a stick of RAM helped?

That's exactly what I am saying

I have tried everything else there was to try, but since removing the stick of ram (now I only have 1 stick of 512), it has worked perfectly since....of course I will let you know if there is another re-occuring problem.

I was even freezing up before removing the RAM, as well as getting those frustrating memory errors.....but now (touch wood), I'm error free.

I hope this works for you & anyone else who has the same problems.

I'm off again to play CSS....WOOHOO!!

PS: I'm no longer known as amadpig, I'm now averyhappypig

 

[steelslay]

temp fix for all mem probs

hi all
yep this problem is realy ****ing me off aswell i love mapping in hammer just wish i could do it without the memory prob well here is wot im doing for he time being.

like steam forums it defo helps if u close the sdk/playgames launcher windows once u got hammer up and running wot i am doing at moment is when hammer is up on screen i get windows task maniger up and wak it onto performance that way i can kep an eye on memery wow u should see it shoot on up and up and up . in fact if you start w.t.m b4 hammer u can watch all yer ram going into it,ha ha ha
no seriously if u get w.t.m up u have a warning system so u can save map and close hammer b4 it crashes,just start it up again and load your map again and u are ready to go again btw while monitering the ram it went from 320 to 470-490 and stayed there the whole time put as soon as i started adding textures to things it krept up and up so is to do with textures as memery didn,t realy move when doing the building of the map
hope this is handy for all as it is for me lets hope valve sort this out soon as its not good

 

[steelslay]

hi all
yep this problem is realy ****ing me off aswell i love mapping in hammer just wish i could do it without the memory prob well here is wot im doing for he time being.

like steam forums it defo helps if u close the sdk/playgames launcher windows once u got hammer up and running wot i am doing at moment is when hammer is up on screen i get windows task maniger up and wak it onto performance that way i can kep an eye on memery wow u should see it shoot on up and up and up . in fact if you start w.t.m b4 hammer u can watch all yer ram going into it,ha ha ha
no seriously if u get w.t.m up u have a warning system so u can save map and close hammer b4 it crashes,just start it up again and load your map again and u are ready to go again btw while monitering the ram it went from 320 to 470-490 and stayed there the whole time put as soon as i started adding textures to things it krept up and up so is to do with textures as memery didn,t realy move when doing the building of the map
hope this is handy for all as it is for me lets hope valve sort this out soon as its not good

forgot to mention that windows task manager runs ontop of hammer so u can keep your eye on it all time ok

 

[michaelsil1]

That's exactly what I am saying

I have tried everything else there was to try, but since removing the stick of ram (now I only have 1 stick of 512), it has worked perfectly since....of course I will let you know if there is another re-occuring problem.

I was even freezing up before removing the RAM, as well as getting those frustrating memory errors.....but now (touch wood), I'm error free.

I hope this works for you & anyone else who has the same problems.

I'm off again to play CSS....WOOHOO!!

PS: I'm no longer known as amadpig, I'm now averyhappypig

You can put the other stick of RAM back, but you have to relax the memory Timings when using multiple sticks of RAM. This is necessary unless you are using example: 400 MHz rated Memory at 333 MHz then you can use the advanced Memory Timings otherwise expect a crash.