graphical problems on HL2 or any expansions/mods

[fenwick]

Hey Guys, I'm hoping someone can help me out. I just upgraded my entire system, and now whenever I start up HL2 the screen looks normal for a split second, and then all I see is just crazy graphical glitches all over. I happens before I can even click on the menu to see if I can change any settings. My system is as follows:

Windows Vista Ulimate (32-bit version)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5400+ 2.81 Ghz
4 GB ram
GeForce 8800 GTX 768 MB DDR3
Wide screen monitor (but had before I upgraded and it worked fine in widescreen then)

I just downloaded the latest drivers and that didn't seem to help at all. I made sure steam and HL2 are comepletly up to date. I wanna play through it again and eventually get ep. 2 but not gonna bother if I can't get it to work.

And yes, I do have a retail version of the game I got when it first came out. It worked fine on my old system which was quite a bit less powerful.

Any help would be appreciated!

thanks in advance!!!

 

[dal1978]

You could try some of the command line parameters to override the defaults:
-dx9 or -dx8 to specify direct X level.
-window to run in windowed mode instead of fullscreen.

May at least let you get to the settings menu to play with the parameters. The are some more parameters listed at: http://hl2.gamegate2k.com/halflife2/halflife2commandline

 

[Xendance]

You could try some of the command line parameters to override the defaults:
-dx9 or -dx8 to specify direct X level.
-window to run in windowed mode instead of fullscreen.

May at least let you get to the settings menu to play with the parameters. The are some more parameters listed at: http://hl2.gamegate2k.com/halflife2/halflife2commandline

-dxlevel 9
-dxlevel 8

 

[Tuskin]

Also, you have 8800, you should beable to do -dxlevel 95 as well. At least my ATi Radeon 2600 gives me that.

 

[fenwick]

thanks a lot, the -dxlevel 9 command worked perfectly!

 

[fenwick]

ok.. well that solution worked great, but now I have a new problem maybee someone can help me with

I played through portal first, finished the game and then started playing the advanced levels. Keep in mind this was all in multiple sittings, so I closed and restarted the game multiple times.

Suddenly now when I load up Portal it goes to the initial loading screen, then crashes to the desktop. I never put in the dx9 command into portal, so I figure I'd try that, no change.

I decided to try out HL2 (the original at first) to see if it was just a problem with portal, it works fine at first, but then any time it loads a new section the game crashes to the desktop. Windows just comes up and says "HL2 has stopped working"

I'm going to try reinstalling it, but that might take a bit, so I figured I'd ask here first, I didn't see any other threads with this prob, but maybe you guys can help? The weird thing is that Poratl/HL2 worked perfectly but just suddenly stopped?

<edited for spelling errors>

 

[fenwick]

Update...

I was able to get HL2 to work by using dx8 instead of 9, the only problem there is that everytime I exit out of HL2 and go back in all of my graphical settings are set to default. I guess its not that big of a deal, just kind of annoying to have to reset them everytime. Anyone know of a fix for this?

Also uninstalling/reinstalling Portal did nothing. It still just crashes before it even finishes loading. Any ideas? I've tried the dx8 and 9 commands for it, but no use. I've disabled my virus protection.. nothing.

 

[Dekstar]

fenwick, the commandline parameter will constantly reset your graphical settings until you remove it from the command line again, though this will not reset the dxlevel, it will stop overriding your graphics settings.

 

[fenwick]

thanks dekstar, that worked perfectly with the graphics resetting problems.

Portal still crashes before it even gets to the menu screen, and I just found out that team fortress2 is doing the same thing. HL2 works fine however. Please, if anyone can help, I'd really like to play the game I purchased.

 

[fenwick]

I've found this same problem occurs on HL2 ep. 2. but both the normal HL2 game and ep. 1 work perfect, please help, anyone?