HL2 keeps freezing at load screens

[Foxy]

Athlon XP2000+
9800pro, 128mb
768mb ram
XP Pro.

Hi. I installed the game from the DVD, had problems with load screens, uninstalled steam, reinstalled it from steampowered.com and also downloaded the game instead of installing from the DVD in case of any corrupt files. In both cases, I get the same problem of the game not getting past the load screens. When I lowered the settings to medium detail it was fine for a while, load screens only took a few seconds, but then I got to a load screen where I'd just met the woman who helped me at the start of the game, and it froze again. The default video settings in advanced all had the * recommended settings and these were mostly on high and at 1024 res so why would it recommend those if my system wasn't up to it? How am I meant to play this game without load screen lockups? Other than those, the game plays great. My rig is crap I know, but I played doom3 on high quality, 1024 res but with various settings off. Surely I'm not meant to play HL2 on the lowest possible settings? Is the game that much more graphics intensive? Every time it freezes at 'loading' I have to ctrl, alt, del and my desktop res stays on 1024. I updated my ati cats from 5.10b to 6.1 yesterday. Thanks for any help.

 

[Beerdude26]

Well, first off, the load times in HL2 are simply atrocious. They're waaaaay too long. Updates fixed this problem for a part, but you can still be looking at a "loading" screen for five minutes if you've got textures set on high.
Your computer should be able to handle it (although your CPU is slightly underpowered, but it should be alright).

 

[Foxy]

Yeah, but I've had load screens on for nearly 15 minutes before I decided it's not going to load. Perhaps I need to set everything to low? Or perhaps keep medium settings but change res to 800x600?

 

[Beerdude26]

800X600 may not be good either, 1024X768 would be fine.
Also, try validating your files: steam://validate/220

 

[Foxy]

Thanks for the link. Validating showed no problems. Someone elsewhere said this to me:

"Make sure that via steam you have decrypted not just the HL2 single player but the HL2DM and CS as well. Unlock all 3 games (hl2, cs:s, hl2dm, ) via Steam download (not disk). I had a few issues until I did all 3."

Reckon I need to go through all that? I was only given the options to download HL2 and CS source on the DVD anyway.

 

[Foxy]

Anyone else? Oh I get stuttering too, in the scene where gordon gets his suit for the first time and all the teleporter stuff, lots of audio and video stuttering.

 

[Foxy]

Well, the default high quality settings for model, shader, texture and shadow details and high dynamic range (' *Settings recommended for your system' ??) seemed to be causing the problem. I've changed them to medium, low and bloom and everything is running fine now, load screens seem to be consistently working. I tried change back to high settings once I'd loaded a new scene and it worked but again there was stuttering and load screen problems again. So I'm staying on these settings now as the stuttering seems to have gone pretty much. Makes me wonder why the game recommended settings my system couldn't handle.

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/8726/screenshot1592et.jpg

 

[Beerdude26]

Well, a fragmented hard drive can often decrease performance by as much as 20%, so if that's the case your computer might indeed have had problems running it on recommended settings

 

[Foxy]

Nope, I checked and it said I don't need to defrag at the moment. I've disabled high dynamic range now and things are better. Got my high settings back except texture details which I put to medium as it seemed to be causing stuttering.

 

[Beerdude26]

You've checked using a dedicated program like Diskeeper, right? Because Windows defrag is teh suck for analysing your drive

 

[Foxy]

Ah, in that case, a defrag can't do any harm. I'll do it before bed tonight.:cheers: