Problems with all source games

[Neon_Dragon]

My friend recently purchased Half life 2 game of the year edition, he has steam installed ok, but whenever he tries to launch any of the games the loading screen appears and then his pc reboots a few seconds later.

His pcs specs:
Athlon 64 3700+
1gb RAM
Geforce 6200
Win XP Home

I got him to update his drivers, run windows update, verify game files and so on and his DirectX is up to date, but the problem still occurs, he submitted an error report and that said it was an unknown error with his Nvidia drivers, he couldn`t have installed the wrong drivers because this was happening before he updated them.
Any ideas whats wrong exactly?

 

[Beerdude26]

Make sure he also updated his sound drivers.

 

[Neon_Dragon]

I told him to get the latest ones over msn, I`ll edit this post when hes installed them.

 

[Barney Fife]

Like any other drivers, uninstall old driver, reboot, and install new driver. Do the same if and whenever installing new driver.
Also if you're using creative SB, some of those cards do have updated/unified drivers to be installed.

Good Luck.

 

[Neon_Dragon]

Thanks for the quick replys.
I thought Windows update would have had his latest sound drivers, it did for mine, but apparently not for his.

 

[Beerdude26]

Thanks for the quick replys.
I thought Windows update would have had his latest sound drivers, it did for mine, but apparently not for his.

Pff, Windows Update often has outdated drivers or drivers that have been checked not to cause any problems whatsoever with Windows.
Of course, this takes very long and graphic drivers are released almost (bi-)monthly.

 

[Neon_Dragon]

No luck, he installed the new drivers from the manufacturers site, and it still reboots his pc.

 

[Beerdude26]

Well, you could try this site that houses alternative drivers for ATi and nVidia cards:
http://www.omegadrivers.net/main.php

Don't ask me if it'll work though, although some people with ATi cards have gotten their version of HL2 to work after installing those drivers instead of the official ones.

Make sure you delete the original ones first, restart and install the omega ones then.