System Freeze w/ looping squelching sound

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sirRealist

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I know others are having a similar problem, but since every system is different i thought id start a new thread

to start with, heres my system:

amd 64 3000+
ati radeon 9800pro
1GB ram
msi k8t neo (via k8t800 chipset)
creative labs audigy 2 zs

i am running the game at:
1024x768
4x AA
4x anisotropic
all settings on high

i have had this system running for 6 months now playing all sorts of games with no problems, including doom3. When i play half life2, i can play for anywhere from 5-20 min or so before a crash. The sound will change to some terrible squelching which loops, and either the video will freeze or the monitor will turn off. Either case requires a hard reset. I have tried ATIs newest 4.12 drivers with DNA drivers, 4.12 w/o DNA drivers, and 4.11 w/o DNA drivers. I also have the newest drivers for my sound card and VIA chipset. I have also tried playing the game with all these drivers with the sound card disabled (no sound) in device manager, as suggested by steampowered. Obviously when the sound is disabled i dont hear a sound loop, but i still get the game crash. Nothing in my system is overclocked, including video card. Performance settings in BIOS are not set aggressivly (RAM timings etc). I can only think of 3 things left to try.
1) Steampowered suggested putting the audigy in the PCI slot closest to the video card, though i don tthink this will help as i get the same crashes w/ the sound disabled.
2) try playing the game on less aggressive in-game video settings, though again, this shouldnt be the problem
3) reformat my entire system and hope for the best.

Any thoughts? suggestions? ideas? ....anything?
 
are you overclocked? www.steampowered.com say hl2 is very sensitive to overclocking, no matter how stable other games are

[edit] :eek: note to self: read entire post before replying...[/edit]
 
the only time i managed to crash like this was when i had AA forced in display properties, make sure it's set to application-controlled
 
yeah, all my video options are set to application preference. Also, i thought id add that ive been able to play Vampire The Masquarade : Bloodlines just fine. I know its a different game, but i thought that might help
 
You're not the only one with that problem. I crash in hl2, but I work just fine in bloodlines. It could be the power supply, or your radeon is overheating (neither of which are likely). I also have a similar config, and nothing has helped me (drivers, reinstalls, config changed). Thoughts:
It's probably not your sound. It sounds more like the system just fails due to radeon problems which would likely explain the monitor problems and needing a hard reset. I have crashes like these ones - a couple times, after patiently waiting, I got a VPU recover message and my game was actually working again (only to crash again).
Also, it is highly likely that Valve, in their series of buggy Steam updates, have done something that makes the game crash like that and they will fix it soon (I hope it's this one).
Altering the settings probably won't do anything - it runs fine w/ no lag until the crash, doesn't it?
 
yeah, it runs completly smooth. Maybe the AA is messing it up or something. Im gonna go try that now, be back soon with some helpful info i hope
 
I don't know if this will help, but if you want to give it a try: Start, Run, msconfig, Selective Startup, Uncheck Load Startup Items and Reboot. This is for trouble shooting; if your game works add a check to each Startup Item to find out what the culprit is.
 
no luck... ran HL2 @ 800x600 w/ aa and anisotropic off and all settings on low or medium, and the game froze within 10 minutes.
 
this happened to me in another game i have and i was told playing the game in windowed mode helps,maybe you could try that
 
nope, crashed. Windowed mode isnt going to solve this problem, unfortunately.

im gonna try adding this command to the run line:
+mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1

i got this from the thread "fix!! loading screen lock and memeory failier" probably isnt the same problem, but at this point im grasping at straws...
 
Hi, I'm having similiar problems.. Steam says on their forums or their help forum, or whatever they are calling it, that there is a problem with AMD cpu's and Via chipset combinations. they suggest installing newer 4 in 1 drivers. I tried that and it still crashes. Sometimes I don't, well, actually all the time before that it crashed before it would even start up, at the first loading screen. sometimes it goes that far, and then crashes on the second load screen. the, 4, count em, 4 times i've actually started the game, I've only gotten as far as talking to Barney, and trying to go to the next area. it freezes every time at the loading screen going into the stairwell, after you jump out the window.

I wonder if Valve or Steam even reads these message boards. I'm getting so damned tired of this crapola. I bought the DVD collectors edition for 80 bucks. What a sucker I am. Oh, i just checked ebay to see if there were any interested party's wanting to purchase hl2. There were 118 auctions for the game, and only 14 people even remotely interested. this sucks. and to hear all the reviewers tauting this game as the game of all games is making me nautious <sp>. it seems that the problems with this game can't or won't be made public. g4techtv, maximumpc, pcgamer. all of them. i've never seen anything like this before. i think i'm going to go play diakatana. at least that will run.

Tenspeed
 
I moved my Audigy next to the AGP and haven't crashed since. See my reply on page 61 #910 in the really long thread.
 
i havent tried selective startup yet, but i will when i get home... i didnt that would be it, but ill give it a shot anyway, ive seen much weirder things.
 
i have an AMD and VIA chipset and i've had nothing like this. and i can think of one game that caused this much trouble when it came out - black and white.
 
as for moving my audigy.... why not? I already got the game to crash a bunch of times with the sound card disabled, but who knows, maybe itll work...

im also posting a thread on the steampowered forum, so if i find a solution there, ill let you all know
 
Mine crashes and I am using the sound card on the motherboard. ARGH!! Can't move that bad boy.

PLEASE keep us updated on anything that might work. I have tried every tweak on this forum and nothing has worked consistently.
 
i JUST got posting rights to the steampowered forums, so ive posted there with everything ive tried up till now. no replies yet. ill post here anything i find out...
 
this was just posted to the steampowered thread:
"Try turning off FastWrites in bios, and if you get rivatuner(google it), turn off fastwrites with that too"

im at work now and cant try it, but i will when i get home. Please post whether or not any of you have had luck with this...
 
i was advised to turn it off anyway, not just for half life. my friend's exact words were, "you get a 0.05% performance boost for a 50% loss of stability." completely made up statistics, but you take his point and he knows a lot more than i do about it. i can't say if it worked cos i changed some other things at the same time, and i only had medium stuttering and no freezing anyway, but for me personally fast writes are off and staying that way
 
They need to patch this... I am trying to help my brother get it working on his computer. Everytime he is at the transporter part as soon as the guy with the white beard is about to say "...Freeman" it locks up and restarts his computer.
 
well, i have what I hope is good news for everyone. I dont know for sure yet, but i think i've found the solution to my, and hopefully other's problem. Actually, Savarak over in the steampowered fourms suggested this. Just turn off fast writes. For most people this will be in the BIOS under "advanced chipset features" or the like. you'll lose very little if any game performance, and gain a whole lot of stability. I meant to do it a while ago, just kept forgetting. Hot damn, i hope this helps some of you. Ive been able to play for 2 hours straight now, without a single crash. even if it does crash, i can deal with 2 hour play sessions. Thanks to everyone who helped out...
 
I will have my brother try that and I will tell you guys how it goes.
 
I'm curious whether you moved your soundcard or not. My fastwrites are still enabled and I haven't crashed in over a week (since moving my audigy).
 
Disabled the fast writes in the bios and played counterstrike for about 2 hours last night!! Even rebooted the machine to make sure it would still work and I will be damned if the game ran for another 30 minutes without any problems.

The system is shutdown at the moment but I will test it again when I get home from work today. I really hope this is the fix but I have been fooled before. (fingers crossed)
 
No i didnt move my audigy. I probably should since its a good idea anyway, but the only change i made was disabling fast writes. Im gonna put the new 4.12 DNA drivers in and verify stability later tonight.
 
Fooled again!!

Booted the old girl up and gave CS:S a try. Lasted about 5 minutes before I got the looping sound and a hard lock. YAY!!! I am beginning to wear my reset button out.

C'mon Valve!! Let's fix what your patch broke.
 
After reading many people saying that "it locks up and restarts my computer at the transportation part" and that fixing the problem involved moving the sound card, I had my brother try this.

THIS SOLVED THE PROBLEM! Either that or the newest update from steam fixed it cuz after he moved the sound card he booted up steam and it upated. Rather than move the card back to be sure he just played all night instead.
 
I recently started getting loackups since installing Cats4.12. I am beginning to woner whetehr it is these drivers.

Kwack
 
The 4.12s were supposed to be optimized for Half-Life2. (I think) I can't imagine the drivers being the problem because people with Nvidia cards are having lockups also.

All I know is that I finished the game without any problems (except for the occasional sound stutter) before the update on the 22nd of December. Whatever they "fixed" screwed my game.
 
kwack do you have radlinker running?i had it and it caused a hell of alot of problems with my cats 4.12,crashed my system at the windows screen,i thought i'd have to reinstall windows but i uninstalled radlinker and it fixed my probs
 
In that case no - I recently downloaded the Cats4.12 with the Catlyst control centre.

Can anyone advise what shoudl the setting be for fast wrirtes etc

Cheers
Kwack
 
I was in the process of tearing my hair out over the exact problem that sir_ realist had. I am gonna do the fast writes disabling thing and see what happens. Cheers ppl
 
the setting for fast writes should be DISABLED
fast writes is usually a BIOS setting, under something akin to "Advanced Chipset Features" or something similar. Just browse your BIOS for Fast Writes and make sure they're disabled. Its a good idea to do this even if this isnt your problem, as it dosnt help perfmance much or usually at all, and can lead to a lot of system instability. Heres more detailed info on fast writes:


What Is That BIOS Setting?

Q: I was fooling around with my BIOS settings to improve performance recently, and I found something I didn't understand. Should I enable "fast writes" for my AGP port?

A: Probably not. In theory, fast writes let the CPU send certain kinds of image data directly to the graphics card, bypassing main memory. This increases performance under certain conditions.

Unfortunately, those conditions are pretty rare. Some gamers report occasional, modest improvements with fast writes enabled, but most tests show no positive effect. I've seen as many reports of fast writes slowing systems down as I have of them speeding systems up. What's worse, systems with fast writes enabled are often more prone to crashes. All in all, it's best to leave fast writes off.
 
so HL2 crashd on me last night the same exact way as before. Two things had changed from the time before when i had played it for 4 hours w/o a crash:
-I uninstalled the 4.11 catas i was using for diagnostics and installed 4.12 DNA drivers
-Got the 1/10 official update

last night i was able to play for about an hour and a half and then i got the crash, so either i never fixed the problem in the first place and its still crashing, last night was a fluke, or one of the 2 above changes influenced the crash. Im gonna move my sound up to the top PCI slot and play tonight and see what happens. If it crashes again im going to try going back to 4.11 catas and see what happens. Ill keep you all posted.
 
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