game crashes w/looping sounds...um, fixed, i think....

[BigDannyO]

p4 3Ghz
512 DDR2
ATi x300 pci-e
SB audigy 2
WinXP SP2

so i was having this problem and was finding no useful answers anywhere and have still received no feedback from valve customer support!!

i have downloaded new drivers for my graphics card from www.omegadrivers.net after i found a thread on the steam website where somebody had suggested that these are much better than the standard ATi ones.

so i installed (after removing the ATi control panel), and have had two good 2 hour sessions on seperate days on HL2 without any problems whatsoever. Before i had been experiencing crashes between 5-20 mins into play.

Unfortuanetly, due to the complete randomness of the crashes in the first place, i have no way of knowing if the problem has been fixed or is lying in wait for another attack!!

Anyway, if anybody is having the same problem as i "was" and is feeling brave enough to try some third party modded drivers, this could provide you with a solution.

I'll post again if it hasn't worked....

 

[BigDannyO]

i guess not then. ugh, hours of crash free gameplay, and waddya know, another goddam crash. Argh, damn you valve!!!! :frown:

 

[Laivasse]

The crashing/looping sounds thing is commonly due to a graphics card overheat. Try turning of fast read/fast write in the ATI control panel, and turn your AGP speed down from 8x to 4x (you might need to change it in the BIOS). The performance hit is small.