must.. fix.. weird.. problem

[special-ed]

Well I am having a crashing problem but i'm sure it's not steam related, I only had 3 steam-related crashes when I first got hl2, one on counter-strike source but none ever since.

I was having crashes on all direct-x related games (even happend on my sega emulator) where my computer just restarted. On steam games either the game would lag out for around 30 seconds or freeze and blank out, then restart after 30 seconds. So this all started 3 weeks ago, then stopped for a couple days after I moved my comp away from the wall and blew some dust off it, then it started back up again.

I switched from the fx5200 to the radeon 9600 pro (and cleaned all the dust out of my comp) and noticed effective changes in most games but not too much in hl2. This fixed the freezing problem but just now it started back up again, except this time the comp just makes a shutting off sound and the game would freeze with my health draining and me not being able to move.

Could this be direct x?

-Edit: I switched to the latest driver (5.4) and my comp still glitched out..

-Edit: The freezing seems random, never know when it'll strike..

 

[special-ed]

I just froze on cs (not source) and it said connection problem with an odd shutting off sound from my comp. Also the timer was still going down and it seemed like I was under one giant lag spike wtf!?!?? This is my one problem if someone could help me fix this everything would be perfect.

 

[Danimal]

I had a very similar problem, my computer would freeze completely. It ended up being my hardrive.

 

[15357]

i almost have the exact same problem.

turn off hardware acceleration for GC