G
Gumgo
Guest
I have been trying to fix this for weeks. I will describe my problem in as much detail as I can and all attempts I have made at fixing it. (Please read the whole post before responding.)
When I run Half-Life 2 or Half-Life 2 Episode one from the exe, shortcut, within Steam, etc. the game displays the Valve logo. Then it goes to the blurred menu screen and displays the "Loading" text for 20-30 seconds. Immediately after it quits, I get the error:
Engine Error
Model models/****/****.mdl not found and models/error.mdl couldn't be loaded
Where **** is a path and filename for the model. It is different each time! After that error I receive:
hl2.exe - Application Error
The instruction at "0x********" referenced memory at "0x********". The memory could not be "read".
Click on OK to terminate the program
Then the monitor returns to normal resolution. Also, occasionally it just shows the memory read error and skips the model error.
Here is my setup and other details
Windows XP SP3 Home Edition
AMD Athlon 64 Processor 4000+ 2.39GHz
2GB RAM
ATI Radeon Xpress 200M with Omega drivers installed (not the problem because other the other games work fine, see below)
Steam is installed on an external (USB) hard drive (E) which is 250GB and has tons of space left. I also have Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Half-Life 2 Episode 2 installed, ALL OF WHICH WORK PERFECTLY FINE. ONLY Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 have this problem!
I have tried to solve this MANY ways and have only gotten worse results. Here is what I have tried:
- Install the games from Orange Box DVD - no luck
- Deleted local game files, install the game from Steam download - no luck
- Verify cache of the game files - no luck, verified fine
- Compared all files to my friend's game files, they were exactly the same
- Uninstalled and reinstalled steam - no luck
- Delete steam .blob file, no luck
- Changed page file size for E drive from No paging file to Custom size: Initial size 2046, Maximum size 4092, no luck (don't think it is hard drive anyway, because other games work)
- Delete Half-Life 2 directory in my steam/<my account> directory, no luck
- Turned off all firewalls/antivirus/script blocking/monitoring programs and IMing programs, sometimes this seemed to make it skip the first error but maybe it was just coincidence, because it skipped the first error other times too
- Ran game in compatibility mode and disabled visual themes, no luck
- Ran game in windowed mode - no luck
- Ran game with +mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1 - ***weirdness, see note below
- Ran game with -dxlevel 81 - completely crashed my computer, and screwed stuff up and I had to edit the registry to revert back to dx 9, definately didn't work at all
- Tried different drivers, most of which had other errors like the one with Direct3DDevice9:
resent and one that just hung at the blurred loading screen
- Even went as far as extracting HL2 + Source Engine files, finding a steam crack, and running HL2 without steam to see if that would even work, and the same error occurred (I deleted the cracked files afterwards)
*** Okay, so when I tried +mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1 just now, something weird (good at first, then very bad) happened. The first time, the game minimized and maximized several times throughout the Valve logo and loading, then an error popped up about not being able to find the entry point of some DLL. Then suddenly... the main menu appeared! First time I'd seen it! Instead of playing though, I quit and tried again to see if it would work again. This time, after some minimizing weirdness, I got the darn engine error, followed by the memory read error except I also got BSoD crash and my computer restarted. I had tried +mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1 before, but neither of these things had happened in the past.
I would really like to get this working (can't play 3/5 games on Orange Box if you consider that Episode 2 is meant to be played after HL2 and Episode 1) so I will try any more suggestions anyone has. Please do not suggest things like "verify the cache" though (things on the list) because I have tried the stuff I listed at least once, often multiple times!
When I run Half-Life 2 or Half-Life 2 Episode one from the exe, shortcut, within Steam, etc. the game displays the Valve logo. Then it goes to the blurred menu screen and displays the "Loading" text for 20-30 seconds. Immediately after it quits, I get the error:
Engine Error
Model models/****/****.mdl not found and models/error.mdl couldn't be loaded
Where **** is a path and filename for the model. It is different each time! After that error I receive:
hl2.exe - Application Error
The instruction at "0x********" referenced memory at "0x********". The memory could not be "read".
Click on OK to terminate the program
Then the monitor returns to normal resolution. Also, occasionally it just shows the memory read error and skips the model error.
Here is my setup and other details
Windows XP SP3 Home Edition
AMD Athlon 64 Processor 4000+ 2.39GHz
2GB RAM
ATI Radeon Xpress 200M with Omega drivers installed (not the problem because other the other games work fine, see below)
Steam is installed on an external (USB) hard drive (E) which is 250GB and has tons of space left. I also have Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Half-Life 2 Episode 2 installed, ALL OF WHICH WORK PERFECTLY FINE. ONLY Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 have this problem!
I have tried to solve this MANY ways and have only gotten worse results. Here is what I have tried:
- Install the games from Orange Box DVD - no luck
- Deleted local game files, install the game from Steam download - no luck
- Verify cache of the game files - no luck, verified fine
- Compared all files to my friend's game files, they were exactly the same
- Uninstalled and reinstalled steam - no luck
- Delete steam .blob file, no luck
- Changed page file size for E drive from No paging file to Custom size: Initial size 2046, Maximum size 4092, no luck (don't think it is hard drive anyway, because other games work)
- Delete Half-Life 2 directory in my steam/<my account> directory, no luck
- Turned off all firewalls/antivirus/script blocking/monitoring programs and IMing programs, sometimes this seemed to make it skip the first error but maybe it was just coincidence, because it skipped the first error other times too
- Ran game in compatibility mode and disabled visual themes, no luck
- Ran game in windowed mode - no luck
- Ran game with +mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1 - ***weirdness, see note below
- Ran game with -dxlevel 81 - completely crashed my computer, and screwed stuff up and I had to edit the registry to revert back to dx 9, definately didn't work at all
- Tried different drivers, most of which had other errors like the one with Direct3DDevice9:
resent and one that just hung at the blurred loading screen- Even went as far as extracting HL2 + Source Engine files, finding a steam crack, and running HL2 without steam to see if that would even work, and the same error occurred (I deleted the cracked files afterwards)
*** Okay, so when I tried +mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1 just now, something weird (good at first, then very bad) happened. The first time, the game minimized and maximized several times throughout the Valve logo and loading, then an error popped up about not being able to find the entry point of some DLL. Then suddenly... the main menu appeared! First time I'd seen it! Instead of playing though, I quit and tried again to see if it would work again. This time, after some minimizing weirdness, I got the darn engine error, followed by the memory read error except I also got BSoD crash and my computer restarted. I had tried +mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1 before, but neither of these things had happened in the past.
I would really like to get this working (can't play 3/5 games on Orange Box if you consider that Episode 2 is meant to be played after HL2 and Episode 1) so I will try any more suggestions anyone has. Please do not suggest things like "verify the cache" though (things on the list) because I have tried the stuff I listed at least once, often multiple times!
