Problems with Video Drivers

[mic03]

I have a Dell 600m Laptop with the following specs

1.3ghz pentium M
512mb Ram
64mb Mobility Radeon 9000 video card

I can get through installation just fine (I think, I don't sit through the entire process). But when it comes to running the game, it crashes to the desktop saying something along the lines of "Your video drivers stopped working". It then goes to the desktop which is now at low resolutions and the color is messed up. I also get an error when starting up the game that says my video drivers are out of date. BUT there isn't a video driver out there for mobility radeon cards, so wtf am I supposed to do?

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I have the retail collectors edition and it seems to be taking forever to unlock CS: Source and HL: Source

 

[mic03]

no ideas?

 

[logie1]

i have a advent laptop with exact same spec as yours and can get the game running very good albeit with all settings on low.

unfortunately our graphic card is only directx 8 compatible and i had installed directx 9. when the game loads up it must try and use directx 9 which causes the crashes. the solution i found was posted on another thread. you have to right click on halflife2 shortcut on desktop and in the target field add a space then "-dxlevel 80". dont add the quote marks though. apply this then reload half life and it should work in dirextx 8 mode. if you still have same problems you might have to go back to directx 7. just change the "80" to "70".

hope this help as it worked for me and a work mate.

happy gaming

 

[Really Steamed]

I have a Dell 600m too with the same problem. Same specs except for the video is 32Mb instead of 64Mb.

HL2 seems to insist on running in 640x480 mode, but my screen resolution can only go down to 800x600. It would be great if someone could post a simple fix such as a mod to the HL2 shortcut to coerce HL2 to run in a higher display resolution.

 

[surfacenormal]

same exact problem here.

Radeon 9000 mobility 64MB

Are you sure these cards aren't dx9 compatible? I ran doom3 on full settings just fine, and the 9000 mobility fully supports pixel shaders and all the other dx9 goodies, just like the desktop radeon 9000's and up.

Even if you used a WAY older video card with dx9, it shouldn't crash the system, it should revert back to whatever it does support.

I'm running dx7, and I know my chip can handle geometry acceleration (dx8) and pixel shaders (dx9). I'll download the latest 3dmark and test it, just to be sure.

I'll post the results here when I get them.

 

[surfacenormal]

Ok, did some research.

http://www.ati.com/products/mobilityradeon9000/

it looks like the 9700 and above fully support dx9. That includes version 2.0 of the directx vertex and pixel shaders.

the 9000-9600 should fully support directx8.1 features. that's version 1.0 of the directx vertex and pixel shaders, geometry acceleration, etc. As far as I can tell, you won't get those cool refraction effects, but that's about the only difference between dx9 and dx8.1.

So if you have a radeon 9000-9600, and can run in dx 8.1 mode, then congrats, it's about as good as it's going to look on your card. If you're stuck on dx7 mode, or can't get it to run at all, then you should be pissed off (like I am. :frown: ).

 

[Aidenn]

So if you have a radeon 9000-9600, and can run in dx 8.1 mode, then congrats, it's about as good as it's going to look on your card.

Actually, no. Radeon 9500 and 9600 are also DX9 cards (9500 is a stripped down 9700 and 9600 is a stripped down 9800).

 

[logie1]

how can i run in 8.1 mode? do i just use -dxlevel 81. sorry for sounding so stupid but dont know much about these things.

 

[PurdueParadox]

ATI Radeon 9000m here too, same problem only it causes me the blue screen of doom