T
Tzarro
Guest
Hello, I have been having a problem with Half Life 2 for quite some time now, and I have tried almost everything I can think of to fix it.
First off, I will describe the problem. When I go to start a new game for Half Life 2, and the "Half Life 2" in white letters fades in and then out, the game crashes to desktop with a datacache.dll error. Prior to this I had loaded several previous checkpoints, and after playing through various parts of the game, I eventually found out that the game would freeze and crash to desktop with the same error everytime I got to a checkpoint. So after this I began going around the web for help. The first place I went was http://support.steampowered.com/. I had gone through that whole site, done all the tests and done everything they said to fix it and nothing has helped. I have updated EVERYTHING; sound and video drivers, motherboard drivers, BIOS updates, nothing works. I emailed tech support twice, but the responses they provided me with did not help because they only gave me solutions that I told them I had already tried. Seemed to be some sort of auto response; I am not sure, but I do know it didn't help. One thing I noticed while troubleshooting on their site is that the problem went away when I entered -nosound into the launch options. From that I that deducted that is must be some kind of problem with my sound card. I have a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS. What is strange is that Half Life 2 has been working for a very long time, and now it sudddenly decides to malfunction. And I did not make any significant changes to my system. Other programs like CS:S and Gmod all work fine, but Half Life 2 is not working. It is only at the autosave checkpoints that this happens, and it goes away with -nosound. I know this means that I could just play with no sound, but who wants to do that?
Besides, the point is to fix it, not ignore it. One more thing I tried is noclipping around the checkpoint areas (which are very small) and continuing on. This also worked and I was able to continue on to the next checkpoint, but this is impractical because I do not have every single checkpoint and autosave point in Half Life 2 memorized (who does?). So, after figuring it must be something with my sound card (which worked just fine in the past), I decided I would try switching to my built in Intel Sigmatel sound device on my motherboard. This resulted in the same problem. I have also tried verifying all the cache files and reinstalling ALL of my steam stuff, even onto a different, larger harddrive. I first began to notice this when I tried playing SMOD: Tactical. I thought this may have been causing the problem, but after reinstalling everything, I figured that was likely not the case.
As I have stated, I have tried everything I can think of. I would GREATLY appreciate anyone's help and input on this subject.
Thanks in advance,
Tzarro
First off, I will describe the problem. When I go to start a new game for Half Life 2, and the "Half Life 2" in white letters fades in and then out, the game crashes to desktop with a datacache.dll error. Prior to this I had loaded several previous checkpoints, and after playing through various parts of the game, I eventually found out that the game would freeze and crash to desktop with the same error everytime I got to a checkpoint. So after this I began going around the web for help. The first place I went was http://support.steampowered.com/. I had gone through that whole site, done all the tests and done everything they said to fix it and nothing has helped. I have updated EVERYTHING; sound and video drivers, motherboard drivers, BIOS updates, nothing works. I emailed tech support twice, but the responses they provided me with did not help because they only gave me solutions that I told them I had already tried. Seemed to be some sort of auto response; I am not sure, but I do know it didn't help. One thing I noticed while troubleshooting on their site is that the problem went away when I entered -nosound into the launch options. From that I that deducted that is must be some kind of problem with my sound card. I have a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS. What is strange is that Half Life 2 has been working for a very long time, and now it sudddenly decides to malfunction. And I did not make any significant changes to my system. Other programs like CS:S and Gmod all work fine, but Half Life 2 is not working. It is only at the autosave checkpoints that this happens, and it goes away with -nosound. I know this means that I could just play with no sound, but who wants to do that?
Besides, the point is to fix it, not ignore it. One more thing I tried is noclipping around the checkpoint areas (which are very small) and continuing on. This also worked and I was able to continue on to the next checkpoint, but this is impractical because I do not have every single checkpoint and autosave point in Half Life 2 memorized (who does?). So, after figuring it must be something with my sound card (which worked just fine in the past), I decided I would try switching to my built in Intel Sigmatel sound device on my motherboard. This resulted in the same problem. I have also tried verifying all the cache files and reinstalling ALL of my steam stuff, even onto a different, larger harddrive. I first began to notice this when I tried playing SMOD: Tactical. I thought this may have been causing the problem, but after reinstalling everything, I figured that was likely not the case.
As I have stated, I have tried everything I can think of. I would GREATLY appreciate anyone's help and input on this subject.
Thanks in advance,
Tzarro
