Hl2 Crashes For No Reason

[theduke]

so i get the game and i install it then i'm playing and i get to the part where the teleporter fails and you end up outside...i continue around the corner until the next "LOADING" point, where an error sound occurs and the screen goes black, and then i'm back on my desktop wtf is up with that? i dont know what to do there wasn't even an error message, the game just quit itself. any help would be appreciated

 

[Freyar]

System Specs, and things running in the background? Did you install CS:S, and mark some of your post there as a spoiler man...

 

[gomorrha]

i have the same problem (at a different spot in the game, though). occurs when the second part of black mesa east should be loaded, just an error sound (no message) an a crash to the desktop. i tried everything i could think of (turning down the details, changing screen resolution, defragmenting my hard drive, different drivers, you name it), to no avail. this sucks.

my specs: AMD 2400+, 512MB RAM, 6600GT AGP GPU

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Do you have maps missing perhaps? Check your consoles for error messages prior to the crashes to see whats missing for HL2 to run. If you can track down the source of the problem, you can put the files back in and it should run sound after that. Occasionally you get bad .gcfs / installation. Cant be stopped but can be fixed.

edit : To get these files you are missing go HERE

 

[Freyar]

A friend of mine had this problem too. It worked before, but all of a sudden it started crashing in the same spot. The thing that fixed it was completely re-installing the game from scratch.

 

[gomorrha]

problem solved (got this from another thread):

edit your link to the hl2.exe to include the parameter "-dxlevel 70", and all maps load fine (you can change that back to directx 9 for the unproblematic maps, of course). i tested this with all the maps that produced crashes on my machine - no more problems for me.

hope this helps...

 

[dogboy73]

Very strange. There has been some speculation that the root of most of HL2's problems (Crashing, stuttering etc..) could be linked to DX9 in many cases & this would certainly enforce that. My boss in work is running the game on a fairly old system (albeit with pretty LOW settings) fitted with an old GForce3 ti200. Apparently he hasn't experienced any stuttering or crashing. He gets frame rate slow down but that's down to his system I reckon.

 

[gomorrha]

strange indeed, especially since about 90% of the maps are totally unproblematic under dx 9 (on my machine, that is - as far as i can tell from other posts in this forum, the crashes do occur on different maps for different people). my best guess is some weird interaction between directX, an nvidia GPU and a VIA chipset, but this is no more than speculation.

 

[gomorrha]

oh well, just to add to the confusion:

i just found out that the "-dxlevel 70" parameter only works in some cases (that is, at least for me, on certain maps). here's a breakdown of my experiences so far:

a) some maps (d1_eli_02, d2_coast_05) only work with "-dxlevel 70". nothing else needed.
b) other maps (d2_coast_08) only work with "-zone 16000" (mind you, directx 9 is NOT a problem on this map)
c) haven't encountered this yet, but bet i will: still other maps probably require -"dxlevel 70" as well as "-zone 16000".

well, i think it's just awesome to pay full price for a game just to find out that it's actually the biggest open beta test in history ((
i'd be really mad if hl2 as such wasn't as immersive as it is (once you
get it to work, that is), but still...

 

[Freyar]

Yeah.. I'd be too. I'm running at full DX9 on all of them without any problems, other than physic-based maps, where loading time is a b**** and CPU lag is evident. I don't have the best machine in the world, but I'm able to have everything on medium.