Half life2, EP1, EP2, and Portal freeze at loading screen

[sanjak]

I've read many topics of crash and freeze but my case seems to be different.

The freeze neither happens at the menu nor some fixed places. I can normally play the game but it looks like it will happen when I load the game too frequent, or perhaps there is a limited amount of load I can have. Particularly when I die too many times in a row. However, my PC can still run when the game freezes (which I always 'end task' the game).

I have:
-disabled Startup Items and non-microsoft Services Items
-increased the PagedPoolSize in Memory Management in Registry Editor
-viewed Paged Physical using Process Explorer, which is always 90,000-100,000 when playing
-decreased Hardware Sound Acceleration Level in DirectX Diagnostic Tool from Fool Acceleration to Standard Acceleration
-changed Virtual Memory in System properties from 1152-2304 to 1152-4000
-tried many fixes statement in the target line in icons' properties
-tried many in-game rendering systems and even lower than the recommended ones, tried a window mode, tried all resolutions (anything that is not over 1024*768, my desktop's resolution), decreased sound level
-disabled autosave
-disabled caption
-defraged my PC after the intallation

That's all I can recall :x And the game still freezes as I said above.

My PC specs:
-Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2
-Pentium IV 2.40GHz
-1GB Ram
-ATI x1650 Pro 512MB
-80GB HDD

Thank you for reading and for any replies! :cheers:

 

[Dekstar]

it shouldn't really be an issue, but try adding "-Dxlevel 80" (minus quotes) in your steam command line options. Load the game, adjust your graphics settings to recommended, then save and quit and remove the command from your command line.

Also I'd put sound acceleration back up to full.

 

[sanjak]

Thank you very much, dekstar. But it doesn't work anyway.
Now I'm trying a new soundcard driver.