Half-Life too is crashing, and, as such, I am crashing as well. Please help.

[Franzen]

Seasons Greetings.

I have a brand spanking new toshiba laptop. I also have a store bought copy of half-life 2.
I installed half-life 2, but it wasn't running very well.
So I went to valve's error forums and followed everything I found there. As such, I:
-am now restarting my laptop with a clean boot.
-have turned off audio acceleration completely.
-have verified the game cache multiple times via steam
-defrag'ed the cgame ache files via steam
-have turned all game settings down to as low as possible.
-start the game with launch option -DXLEVEL 81 via advanced launch options via steam

That being said, everytime I launch the game via stream.. a little window pops up that says:

Unknown Video Card

Your video card does not appear in our database. Consquently, you may or may not be able to play the game with sufficient stability of performance. We would appreciate your help in ensuring that we have sufficient information to address your video card and driver in the future. By clicking the Upload Details button you will help us track which video cards are currently missing from our database.

Your driver details
Window Version: Windows XP
Description: Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset
Version 6.4.10.446

The upload details button isn't clickable... and the view value privacy policy is.
I usually hit the "continue anyway" button.

According to Window Update Manager, I'm entirely up to date. I've downloaded the latest version of DirectX

Some system specs:
Windows XP Professional
Toshiba
Genuine Intel(R) CPU
T1350 @ 1.86 GHz
1.86 GHz, 0.99 GB of RAM

Before I get booted to windows, and receive the "hl2.exe has encounted an error and must close. We apologize.. you might lose any unsaved information" window, I love the game.. any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Franzen.

 

[Beerdude26]

You don't have a dedicated graphics card, only a weaker graphics chip that uses some of your RAM as video memory. Half-Life 2 might indeed refuse to run on such machines.

Anyway, have you updated the game completely yet?

 

[Franzen]

I think so.. The game has the "update automatically through steam" option selected. Is there an easy way to check?

Thanks for the boxing day response, it is greatly appreciated.

 

[Beerdude26]

Please run the Steam Diagnostic Tool to see if your computer has any programs running on it that may interfere with Steam: steam://support/?Issues=*

 

[Acepilotf14]

Does your laptop meet HL2 system specs?

 

[Franzen]

My friends,

Thank you for your continued help.

I ran the steam diagnositc tool, (thank you) and my system passed with flying colours. It met the requirements and there were absolutely no conflicts.
At the bottom, it mentions something about erasing some files. I have not tried that yet.

What would you recommend?

Be well,

Franzen