halflife 2, and counter strike source crashing

[clairelovestlc]

hi im new :angel: and my names claire ( just a little intro)


I bought myself a nice new pc, and as an "investment" i decided to get half life 2 for it, but ive been having a few problems,
i updated my drivers etc before installing it, and then installed and got on with playing and was rather impressed.

untill it crashed that is, the screen went black, in hung on the loop of auditio it was playing, and well that was it, i had to manually reboot, when i restarted it got an error message about the graphics card not gettin enough power and it reducing its settings which it did several times( it said under troubleshooting that it may need an externail power supply if it isnt getting ample power)
thsi happened quite a few times so i called evesham, and there sending an engeneer out monday.


i also noticed that the first of the 2 graphics card was running at about 85 deg and the 2nd at about 80, the ambient temp was somewhere in the high 90's
i rolled back to the earlier drivers which took the temps down to somewhere in the 70's and reduced all the praphics options to low within the game, which is making it crash less.

but now after, i dunno 15 min of play ,screen goes black, "no digital imput" and i have to reboot, but i dontget the error message about not enuff power anymore.



now my question is, will having this external power supply fitted to allow the graphics cards to have ample power fix this problem, or do i need to do somthing else to stop the game crashing, and is there anything else i need to instruct the tech guy to replace/ add/ fix when he comes out

heres a quick pc spec incase u need it

Evehsham Axis 64 SLi
AMD Athlon 64 processor 3800+
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional Edition
1GB dual channel DDR RAM (PC3200) 400MHz (2x512MB)
250GB SATA 7200rpm Hard Drive with 16Mb Cache
2 x 256MB DDR3 NVIDIA 6800GT PCI Express Graphics ( sli)


thanx in advance
clairey

 

[Beavis]

Your system is too powerful for Half-life 2 and I suggest you send it to me ASAP. hehe

Seriously though, I have been having the same problems as you for the last few months. Unfortunately Valve has turned its back on us and we are stuck with a $55 game that won't run on our systems. I have tried everything I can think of to get this game to be stable but it still crashes.

Oh well, I guess I will go play Doom3 for awhile. (it runs smooth for hours) Sorry I can't be any help but I wanted you to know that you are not the only person with this issue.

 

[clairelovestlc]

when i ever i buy a new pc, i make sure its the most powerful system i can get my hands on, then 4 years down the line, its still able to run top games pretty well, where as if id spent less, id prob be on my 3rd pc by then ,and have spent twice as much in all. my old pc, could easily handle the halflife2 demo, no crashes, and doom3, th newones struggeling with the sims2!!!!

the tech guy should be here any time now, so *fingers crossed*
i played the demo for doom3, but i never really got into it, i like to have a bit more of a storyline, one my fave games when iwas a kid was parasite eve2, combined shooting the hell outa stuff, and a relativly alright storyline.

thanks for your help, hopefully ill manage to fix it, and if not ill give the disk to my dog as a frisbee

 

[diluted]

how much watts is your power supply? and 80-90 degrees does seem too hot, my video card only gets up to about 50-60 when in a game. does your case have proper cooling? (a fan on the side of the case helps... if your case has one)

 

[Donfish]

Crashing

Well considering you have 2 power hogs (your video cards),The culprit sounds like it could be them.

That is a main symptom when troubleshooting video.If it crashes first thing you check is if it gets enough power.I don't know off the top of my head but each port (pci express) should be getting a certain amount of power. So Goggle that and see how many amps those gts need per rail and see if your power supply's specs are going to handle it.My guess is not. As for external power supply,I've never really heard of that.Usually people just upgrade and swap out the one they have for a bigger one.

Also When it said it wasn't getting enough power,That could also mean that the video cards weren't plugged in. They need their own power source if its like my card which is a gt. Just like a hard drive or cd rom.So you need to make sure that not only are they in their slot,but make sure they have a 4 pin power hookup in each one.

hope this helps.These are things you can tell your engineer to check out if I'm not too late.

Also ,I've read that there are major bugs in SLI nvidia configurations. Your best bet is too try out beta drivers and see if any of them cure your problem if its not power failing.

And lastly.As for your heat issue. It may just be that you are using nvidia's latest drivers which have a temperature bug in it.Meaning it reads(or actually is hotter) 20 percent higher then normal. There is a way to cure this if you know alittle bit about tweaking your card. If you download a reg file called coolbits(which you can find at guru3d.com) and just double click the file and it will ask you if its ok to add a registry file.Click yes.Now goto your nvidia advanced control panel.(right click desktop,click properties.goto settings then advanced.)

Now you'll see a category called clock frequencies.You're not going to overclock anything so don't worry. Now after you agree goto the option manual overclock.Then make sure you have it on 2d performance.Now slide the core bar over until its 402mhz and just hit the test button(do NOT hit apply).All we are doing is seeing if it will work or not.Now whether it passes or fails it doesn't matter. now click the option up top that says no overclocking. Now your tempertures will slowly start to fall 1 degree at a time until it idles normally. Don't ask me why this works but it does.

You can also avoid all that by downloading(at guru3d.com) the 76.50 beta drivers that are whql certified by microsoft. They fix the temp bug for most people including me which I have a 6800gt.

Just note to read about beta drivers at the guru3d forums and how to uninstall them and use a free program called driver cleaner to get rid of file fragments that may interfere with other drivers being installed over top of them.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Good post Donfish, take his advice. See if things work better if you take the side off and point a normal room fan at the side (Also jealous of your system and nice name, it has a personal significance)

 

[clairelovestlc]

i read about the prob with the graphics drivers when i got the system so i rolled back to the older ones, and it was still running to hot and crashing

the technition came yesterday and again today and basiically they replaced both graphics cards then came out again2day, 2 more new graphics cards a new motherboard new processor, a reformat and a reinstall of windows, then then both dvd/rw drives corrupted themselfs, so he ran a few more checks and then couldent even boot it up without it crashing, basically my dad gave an angery call to evesham who are sending me out a brand new system identical spec but in the "decimator" case, which has 5 fans and an lcd display telling you how fast everythings running and at what temp, i also upgraded my moniter to a 19" while i was at it, and it will be here in about 2 weeks. there all convinced that a system of that spec needs to be in the decimator casing because its designed to cool and moniter temp, and all the problems were caused by the lack of ventelation. all it has was the psu fan and a tiny fan at the front which was blocked by the hardrive.

in the mean time my pc is a vegitable, the optial drives dont work so i cant install anything, so its got windows and thats it. in the mean time im restricted to my laptop as i cant b bothered to bring my old system back up here ( ive it given to my dad, but we dont have internet acess on the middle floor yet)

hopefully my problems should all be resolved soon, * crosses fingers*

thankyou for your help, and Donfish if i have any heat issues on the new systems with the most recent drivers, ill follow your advice


clairey

 

[Donfish]

Wow

Thats the strangest thing I've ever heard.

I've never heard of having to upgrade a case to stop crashes.unless the system was caked in dust,it shouldn't get that hot.But who knows.All these new,faster cpus,mobos,ram,gpus,and anthing else.Who knows what kind of heat they can all produce.And considering you had really no case fans,it was all probably being sucked out by the psu and ran by the gpu and cpu (just a guess).Rising from the bottom of the case to top and only out source.

Anyways,good luck and hope you have a much better experience with your next system.

Nice Set up by the way. You should scream with any game coming out soon and down the road.

 

[clairelovestlc]

well case it was in was small with no extra fans, so there was no air getting around, its an sli system and the case isnt designed forit, the decimator is,
its designed for systems that create alot of heat and cools em its also bigger, the man had to plug somthin in today with tweesers because there was so little space left he coulnt get his fingers in

http://www.xtremecomputing.co.uk/images/Reviews.Rich/Temp/Decimator.jpg

pluss it looks nice!!!

ps what games would u recomend? obviously the half life2 expansions on the list, along with the new tombraider when thyat finaly rears its head, the new sims2 expansion, and i really want resedent evil4, shame its not comin out for pc


ps thanx again

 

[$kelet0r]

Quake 4
BAttlefield 2
Rome: Total War
Stargate sg1 the alliance

Btw welcome to the forums claire, hope u stay

 

[Ennui]

O.O oMg!1 teh femail!/ nekked pixxxx plz ogogo

games:
Battlefield 2
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
Starcraft (must-own, old but classic)

 

[clairelovestlc]

lol! yes im female, no im not sending naked pics, yes i will be staying, but i prob wont b on much untill my pc arives as i dont play games on the laptop.
but hopeflly in about 2 weeks, ish, ill have a new system, that works, and will b a kick ass system thats capable of taking over the world, and ill b happy and back playing hl2

 

[Hectic Glenn]

lol Ennui!
It makes many guys here feel sad when a girl comes along with a better system than ourselves it like a a kick in the genitalia.
Yeah and hang around its a great community here Claire. it will be shining and bright which is what your name means. (dont worry i didnt look that up, real life connection to the name for me )

 

[clairelovestlc]

my name means shining and bright? hey well u learn somthing new everyday

all my friends call me clairey btw
so how long u guys been playing halflife2/ counterstike for?

 

[$kelet0r]

Since it came out LOL
And drooling over it for months in advance
Your system is incredible - probably beats almost everyone in this forum!(jealous); )

 

[clairelovestlc]

thanx the new system should b even better hehe 19" moniters gotta beat 17, and the case its just amazing( and costing me an extra £200 in all).
they phoned just now to conferm everything and said about 10 working days, so that puts me at about the 27th, cant wait!
shame it dosent have 2 gig of ram, but that seemed a bit of an excess, but thats somthing i cna always add in the future should i so wish

 

[$kelet0r]

sucks getting tossed around by evesham
i've a dell inspiron laptop and dell have always been great to me so i'm happy!!!
no horror stories yet
when u get in to computers and gaming

 

[xLostx]

forget about hl2 and css just play 1.6 1.6 > css

 

[clairelovestlc]

they been brilliant to me in the past, and they fixed it all in the end, i've had a dell before, n it was alright, but prefered eveshams

ive been though quite a few pcs in my just under 19 years of existance, the first pc i dont remember, i was about 5, and used to just play on paint, then i had a packard bell, then a dell, then an evesham, and now another evesham

on the laptops side, dads had 4 dell laptops ive had one sony vaio laptop

 

[clairelovestlc]

right well newpc no 2 has arived, and now i have a different game problem, ive got a decimator pc case with an lcd display which moniters the speeds and temps of everythig, and as soon as i open halflife (well within about 2 min) the temp alarms for the hdd and sys sart goingg off, all it says in the absolutly apauling manuel, is if the alarm goes off to change the temp that the alarm goes off, it dosent tell u what a safe temp is, or not what to let it exceed, so ive emailed tech support to see if they can help.

if anyone here has any ideas id be very greatful ( the new systems an identical spec as the one i returned, except in a diff case, which has 5 fans,a nd i have a 19 in display, technically its identical)

 

[clairelovestlc]

got a responce from tech support, the alarms were set as follows


cpu 33
hdd 38
sys 35

which aparently was 2 low, and he recomended i set them to

CPU 70
HDD 45
SYS 50

( but he said they can run can run to and about as high as but ideally shouldn't)

CPU 90
HDD 65
SYS 70


so that problems hopfully all fixed. thanx again

clairey

 

[JellyWorld]

thanx the new system should b even better hehe 19" moniters gotta beat 17, and the case its just amazing( and costing me an extra £200 in all).
they phoned just now to conferm everything and said about 10 working days, so that puts me at about the 27th, cant wait!
shame it dosent have 2 gig of ram, but that seemed a bit of an excess, but thats somthing i cna always add in the future should i so wish

lolz i don't really see the point in getting an extra gig. I have one gig and I've never seen my available RAM drop below 250MB, I've tried running Halo + Half Life 2 + CS Source all at the same time and still the task manager says i'm have 250megs available.

 

[Muhahahaha]

Well, my system pretty much equals that. Besides those video cards...

 

[clairelovestlc]

to be honist i expected a bit more from the video cards.. stuff looks nice, but i was expecting a little bit more, oddly hl2 recomeds the highest settings for everything, except reflections, which it suggests "simple reflections" which i of corse ignore, and choose reflect world. it prob coz it needs the new drivers actually, i installed em before and had problems, maybe ill try again

 

[grmbl]

About HL2 then...
the game is super, i updated my config for it to play it at max detail and frames!
Now even my supersystem isn't up to those HL2 crashes...
Fix this ol' Gabe, you got a cameltoe!!!