System Freeze w/ looping squelching sound

I have a similar configuration and the same problem which only a re-boot will fix, although my processor is Intel 2.8. I have Audigy 1... I thought I might need to upgrade my sound card but after reading your forum, I think I won't. I can play the game OK for a while but is crashes with regularity. Pity. I like the game. Maybe Valve or Steam will come up with a fix. Incidentally, I turn off all unnecessary applications, such as anti-virus etc when playing single-player just to free up resources. That doesn't seem to make any difference to the regularity of crashes but it makes me feel better!
Good luck!
I hope we find a solution.
 
This is working with some success for me....

I have a nVidia FX5200 and have been having many troubles (sound squelch, lockups and BSOD physikilll mem dumps). I went to nVidia and did all the things I could do in the below list for my Intel MB. The lockups and sound corruptions are lessened greatly now:

From nVidia:
"There is no industry standard among motherboard manufacturers for BIOS options. Each motherboard manufacturer will feature different BIOS options which work best with their products. The following recommended settings are BIOS settings when used with NVIDIA based graphic cards. If these options are not present in your motherboard's BIOS, or differ in the way they are phrased, please consult with your motherboard manufacturer for further BIOS setting information:

Assign IRQ to VGA: Enable
PnP O/S Installed: Enable
VGA Pallet Snooping: Disable
PCI Bursting: Disable PCI Latency Timer: 128 Peer Concurrency: Disable
Video BIOS Shadowing: Disable
Video RAM Cacheable: Disable
USWC: Disable/UC
Pipeline Cache Write: Disable
PCI 2.1 Compliance: Enable (Only needed when using PCI graphic cards)
Passive Release: Enable
Delayed Transaction:Enable
VGA Boot Sequence:AGP (When using an AGP graphics card)
Graphics Aperture Size: 128MB (When suing an AGP graphics card)
AGP Turbo Read Mode: Disable
AGP Turbo Write Mode: Disable"


I could see some of these settings affecting Raedons as well...? I was only able to change the PnP O/S Installed: Enable and Graphics Aperture Size: 128MB (When suing an AGP graphics card) and it made a difference
HTH
ChadMan
 
Yeah, I changed Aparture to 128mb (I have 128mb ram on card). I also changed agp to 4* disabled fast write and moved one of my sound cards (SBLive). This imroved things, but I may move my other sound card as well (Delta 44). My settings are all on minimal (res 800 * 640) as well now but had a crash last night 30mins into play. None when I played later on for an hour.
 
so last night i moved my audigy up to the PCI slot 2 away from my agp port (the one right next to AGP is blocked by video card), and i had 2 crashes last night. The weird thing is, the first crash was a crash to the desktop. That is the first time HL2 has crashed without the weird and horrible squelching noice and total system lock. So i thought maybe it was another fluke, and played again... hard lock with squelching within 30 min or so. So, at first oppurtunity, im gonna switch back to 4.11 and see what happens. ****ing-a, i thought i had tis licked.
 
Of possible interest to try

Hi all,

sorry to hear you seem to have regained the crashes again sirRealist, hope you get it sorted. Just thought id post as I was having the exact same thing on an older P4 willamette based system, running at 1024 with medium details, on a gf3 ti500 card. Smooth as hell, then total lockups etc. A mate upgraded to a 6800 ultra and loaned me his old ti4600. Problem totally gone now, along with a long term problem with tv out not detecting on nvidia drivers after the 21.xx set. Not a fix exactly but maybe some of you might find similar with a friends card as a test. Im gonna try out the fast writes bios option and the soundcard move now with the ti500, to see if it helps my own setup. Strangely his ultra carries the tv out problem now though instead. One step forward and two back.

Best of luck

Jayser
 
Hey all, FINALLY a thread describing EXACTLY my issue!
Sir_realist, we have nearly identical systems, save for the motherboard.

AMD 64 3000+
9800 Pro 128mb (6.14.10.6497 catalyst)
1 gig DDR SDRam
Seanix Tech MS-6741 board
Creative SB Audigy LS (mind you in PCI slot Furthest from AGP....Im lazy and will move on weekend)

My crashes are Exactly the same as yours.
I have tried the Omega drivers, and now am back to these Catalyst.

I have a feeling it may be corrupt drivers, my reason is this.
I also play Warhammer 40k Dawn Of War, and it was running fine with Omegas (as far as I can remember) and now IT TOO locks up after about 5 min, mind you not with the exact same sound loops and crazy display, but the crashes both usualy require hard boot.

At first I thought the card was overheating, but my temps are all very low, and how could it overheat in 2 mins?

I have disabled Fastwrite
I will move my soundcard to closer slot, but I havent noticed it solving many peoples problems.

I have given up on HL2 for now, but after seeign this thread Im gonna tough it out with you other guys who are going NUTS about this ! lol

Anyone else playing Warhammer 40k DOW with same issues.... curious.

My brother thinks its either corrupt drivers (but all other games work fine) and another friends thinks its my motherboard conflicting, but I have no idea why?

Sorry to all for not really offering any help, just my gripes! but it is good to find a thread that is EXACTLY my issue!
Thanks all and lets fix this Shiiitz!
 
reinstalled my 4.11 catalysts, so now im configured how i was when the crashing seemed to go away (except that my sound card is now closer to AGP), and it crashed within 15 min. And this crash was much harder... on reboot i got a CMOS/Checksum error. I went into the BIOS and the fail safe defaults had reloaded. Thats when i noticed the fan speed for my Northbridge contoller chip is zero, so maybe that is overheating? Stange if its that, considering i dont have ANY OTHER system hiccups, including playing DOOM3. Also core center is reporting system temp of 35C/95F and CPU temp 45C/113F, not that hot. Plus ive been reading about this problem and all of them say they the NB dosnt get hot and the fan isnt even necessary. im pretty much at a loss at this point. Sometime soon ill open up my case while its running and see if the northbridge fan really is dead, and if so ill try running my system opened up with a box fan on it and see how that goes. im also going to find the memory timings for my memory and manually set them underclocked... ive been reading about people solving lockup issues that way. im getting disapointed and running out of ideas, so post any info you come across, and hopefully we'll find something.
 
well nevermind the overheating northbridge... they removed the fan for mine because it wasnt necessary. Man i hope underclocking my RAM works.
 
made these changes to my system:
set RAM timings to 3-4-8-4 (CL-TRCD-TRAS-TRP)
underclocked RAM bus speed from 400mhz to 333mhz
turned off bank interleaving

these are all way underclocking my system, but i was just able to play for an hour without a crash. im going to play a few more times with these settings and see if its stable. if so, ill try bumping up my RAM bus speed and lowring ram timings.
I noticed a significant amout of the "studder" most people seem to have, though i didnt have it before.
 
sirRealist said:
made these changes to my system:
set RAM timings to 3-4-8-4 (CL-TRCD-TRAS-TRP)
underclocked RAM bus speed from 400mhz to 333mhz
turned off bank interleaving

these are all way underclocking my system, but i was just able to play for an hour without a crash. im going to play a few more times with these settings and see if its stable. if so, ill try bumping up my RAM bus speed and lowring ram timings.
I noticed a significant amout of the "studder" most people seem to have, though i didnt have it before.
Click to expand...
This is a good approach. Make sure you go through this trouble shooting phase with all the latest Drivers.
 
I have the same freekin problem,its very annoying I only get to play for about 10mins then it freezes and the last like 1 second of sound just repeats, and I cant do anything but restart the pc.. I have all the settings on recommended ( except for the water reflect)
its
1024x768,texture high, models high, shadow detail high, shader detail high,filtering trilinear,no antialising,wait forvidsync off

My systems specs:
WinXP Directx9c
1.80Ghz (athlon xp 2200+)
1.51GB of Ram
Soundblaster Live!
Geforce4 Ti4200agp8x

Is there anyway to fix the problem ? its really really really annoying, and if not are they working on it ?
 
well I disabled sound i hl and disabled my sound card, I got it working for about 3hours before it froze again.. before it used to freeze within 10mins
 
Cardo said:
I have the same freekin problem,its very annoying I only get to play for about 10mins then it freezes and the last like 1 second of sound just repeats, and I cant do anything but restart the pc.. I have all the settings on recommended ( except for the water reflect)
its
1024x768,texture high, models high, shadow detail high, shader detail high,filtering trilinear,no antialising,wait forvidsync off

My systems specs:
WinXP Directx9c
1.80Ghz (athlon xp 2200+)
1.51GB of Ram
Soundblaster Live!
Geforce4 Ti4200agp8x

Is there anyway to fix the problem ? its really really really annoying, and if not are they working on it ?
Click to expand...
How much air do you have flowing through your case?
 
so last night i was encouraged by my 1 hour of playablitiy the other night, so i set my RAM bus back to 400 and turned ON bank interleaving, but i left my ram timings at 3-4-8-4. CRASH! another really hard one, where my BIOS was reset back to fail-safe defaults. Im getting kinda worried that a few more system crashes from HL2 will kill my system. Good thing i got an extended warrany from newegg! anyway, after the crash i went back in an set bank interleaving off and downclocked RAM back to 333mhz. So now im back to the settings i have on post #49. Im gonna play some today with these settings and see if the crashing is really gone.
 
michaelsil1 said:
How much air do you have flowing through your case?
Click to expand...
not very much, I was thinkin it might be over heating too, well there is a fan on the geforce and there is the power supply fan, and then there is another one right under the powersupply alittle bigger than that fan, hl is such a good game, I just wish it ran as good as it plays..
 
Cardo said:
not very much, I was thinkin it might be over heating too, well there is a fan on the geforce and there is the power supply fan, and then there is another one right under the powersupply alittle bigger than that fan, hl is such a good game, I just wish it ran as good as it plays..
Click to expand...
Try opening the case and put a fan next to the open space just to make sure you get good airflow then see if the game will play for any length of time.
 
well I just turned off one of the fans because it was making a noise, and the game froze while searching for servers !!!, it never did that before.. so yea I just opened the case,ill put a fan beside it an see if it freezes again
 
Cardo said:
well I just turned off one of the fans because it was making a noise, and the game froze while searching for servers !!!, it never did that before.. so yea I just opened the case,ill put a fan beside it an see if it freezes again
Click to expand...
Let us know what happens.
 
well,I turned the sound back on and with the case open and a fan directly on the motherboard, I played 3 games straight for 2hours without it freezing.. ill "test" it out more later tonight, but the problems seems fixed:)
 
Cardo said:
well,I turned the sound back on and with the case open and a fan directly on the motherboard, I played 3 games straight for 2hours without it freezing.. ill "test" it out more later tonight, but the problems seems fixed:)
Click to expand...
The problem is not fixed just identified.
 
^ yea, but atleast now I can play it until it gets fixed
 
so ive been able to play for a total of about 4 hours now without a crash, with the settings as lited in post #49. I think its down to either bank interleaving or my ram bus thats crashing the system, though ive never had a problem with either before. So, im gonna try playing the game with bank interleaving off and see what happens. The shitty thing is that i have to play the game at much lower settings for it to be smooth with my system so underclocked (had to drop the res from 1600x1200 to 1152x864

Also, i have a dual screen system, so today i monitored my system temp while playing. It never got above 52C/125F. Although there is a cold front moving through my area this weekend, so thats probably factoring in. Ill keep you all posted as i figure out more...
 
well, ive been able to play for hours successuflly, and ive got it nailed down to the RAM bus speed. I put my CAS back to 2.5 and all my ram timings on auto, and re-ebnabled bank interleaving, BUT i left the ram bus at 333 and its running stable. It still gives a pretty significant hit to my game speed but at least i can play it. Im gonna try going to 4.12 DNAs and se what happens, but so far its looking like it was the RAM bus after all. i wonder what would happen if i turned fast writes back on...
 
Any new info?

I went and re-installed an older version of my 4in1 drivers from VIA and updated to the new ATI drivers for my video card. After mucking around with cleaning everything off and then getting the stuff to install properly I was ready to give Half-Life2 a shot.

I jumped into CS:S and to my amazement the game didn't crash. I bought a gun and proceeded to frag away at the 12 year kids that have been playing since day 1. (I didn't do very well) Anywho, after about 30 minutes of playtime the game suddenly squelches at me and reboots my machine. YAY!!! The bug has been awakened from its slumber and will not let me enjoy my $55 investment.

I am convinced that it is not a driver, heat, or loose nut behind the keyboard issue. I took the side of my case off and watched the temperature hover around 39 degrees. Under a load it hit 47. There is no way that heat could be the culprit. Just for kicks I thought I would give it another try without the side panel. I never even made it to the main screen. I see the Counter-strike fella for a second and then my wonderful BIOS screen appears while the machine cycles through a reboot.

PLEASE let there be an update that fixes this issue. I am at my wits end.
 
Beavis, get a nice PSU from a store with no restocking fees, something like 400-500W and no less than 18A on 12V rail, and check if it helps...
 
I went down that road also. I had a Antec 350 watt power supply and figured it might be a power issue. I went to Newegg.com and purchased a Thermaltake Silent PurePower, 420W ATX power supply and the game is still crashing on me.

It is starting to get ridiculous because I have spent way too much money on new equipment to get this game to work correctly.

Here are a couple of other things I have tried:

Re-installed DirectX9: Result: Played CS:S for over an hour. Shutdown the computer for 20 minutes and then tried to play the game again. Crashed before I could see a server list.

Re-installed numerous video drivers: Game will play for random amounts of time before it reboots the computer (10 seconds - 10 minutes).

Tested all my hardware: Ran a CPU stress test for over an hour without any ill effects. Temp hovered around 47 degrees. RAM has been tested with every known program to see if it is hosed. Passed with flying colors.

BIOS changes: I have tried every "tip" that I have read about on the forum in my BIOS. Turned off fast-writes, lowered the AGP to 4X, mucked around with RAM timings (would not recomend doing again), and have shut down everything that isn't being used on my motherboard (SATA and RAID controller, etc). The game still won't run consistently.


Half-Life2 is the only program that will NOT run. I play a buttload of games and have never ran into this sort of problem before. ARGH!!
 
I started getting lockups with looping sound when I changed AGP aperture on 9800 pro to 64MB out of curiousity. Went back to 128MB and no problem since.

I had only 2 memory errors (being the other most discussed glitch) thru the whole game. I can only thank the gaming gods for that 'cause I have Dell mobo and proprietary BIOS and there's no way no change any RAM timings of course.....
 
It´s a GAME bug!

My system:

P4 2.4
Mobo Intel D865PERL
512 MB DDR 333
SB LIVE 5.1
ATI 9700pro

It´s really simple:

A lot of peaple, with the most variable hardware, have the same problem. Only with HL2.

I´ll not change my BIOS settings, I´ll not change my soundcard PCI slot, I´ll not pray for Gabe Newell. I´ll just stop playing this buggy game untill a proper patch comes out.

It´s really ridiculous: this software was delayed two years, and have this type of bug? Pathetic.

Let´s flood the STEAM forums.
 
LoBiSoMeM said:
My system:

P4 2.4
Mobo Intel D865PERL
512 MB DDR 333
SB LIVE 5.1
ATI 9700pro

It´s really simple:

A lot of peaple, with the most variable hardware, have the same problem. Only with HL2.

I´ll not change my BIOS settings, I´ll not change my soundcard PCI slot, I´ll not pray for Gabe Newell. I´ll just stop playing this buggy game untill a proper patch comes out.

It´s really ridiculous: this software was delayed two years, and have this type of bug? Pathetic.

Let´s flood the STEAM forums.
Click to expand...
My buddy and I play hl2 with no problems; we also stay on top of what's going on with our System.
 
"My buddy and I play hl2 with no problems; we also stay on top of what's going on with our System."

I played HL2 without problems too, in this system:

P4 1.6
Mobo P4B
512MB SDRAM
ATI 9700pro
SB Live 5.1

Well, the same VGA and soundcard. And a low end, obsolete, mobo and processor.

The game have serious bugs, instability in a lot of systems.

Just in case, i´ll put my AGP apreture size to 128 instead of 64. I think this stupid game are having trouble with memory/graphic card/transfer rate.

Anyway, it´s a terrible and disgusting bug.

Bye.
 
Potential solutions busted untill now:

I tried the AGP aperture size change. The same crash.

The list (please, remind me if i miss one):

1) AGP Aperture size chages - BUSTED!

2) Change the soundcard PCI slot - BUSTED!

3) Changes in memory latency - BUSTED!

4) New drivers - BUSTED!
 
Lono said:
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.
Click to expand...



EXACTLY MY PROBLEM.
 
Lono said:
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.
Click to expand...



I have a laptop and I can't really move the sound card, can I?
 
It is amazing. Far Cry works perfectly. After downloading ATI 5.1 drivers, no problem with Counterstrike. But Half Life 2 is still screwed up. It has NEVER been able to get past the transporter part as soon as the guy with the white beard is about to say "...Freeman". It is the most frustrating thing I have ever had on a computer. I must have invested 100 hours to try and fix this, yet NOTHING works.
 
For me it is the "read" memory error i think. Before i couldnt even load anylevels in eather hl2 or css but i disabled bandinterleaving and i think that solved it. I still get the "read" error from time to time w/ sound looping.
 
Autosaves ??

I had the same problem and have remidied it, albeit it's a bit of a ball ache.
It seems the game freezes at an autosave point if there are already a couple of (auto)saves in save directory.
You can usually tell if the game has just autosaved as it momentarily pauses (usually just after a significant part). It seeems to do this around every 10 - 15 minutes of play.
You can check if it's done one by going to "Load Game" and an autosave will show up.
What I do at the moment is hit the windows key to drop out of the game and delete the autosave files from the following folder.
Valve/Steam/Steamapps/username/half-life2/hl2/SAVE.
Keeping this clear has stopped my freezes.
I did read on another forum that making the autosave files "read only" fixed it but that didn't work for me.
Best of luck.
 
G-Dog said:
Hey all, FINALLY a thread describing EXACTLY my issue!
Sir_realist, we have nearly identical systems, save for the motherboard.

AMD 64 3000+
9800 Pro 128mb (6.14.10.6497 catalyst)
1 gig DDR SDRam
Seanix Tech MS-6741 board
Creative SB Audigy LS (mind you in PCI slot Furthest from AGP....Im lazy and will move on weekend)

!
Click to expand...

i have also got 9800 pro, amd 64 3000+ and creative audigy ls and i get the same problem..


just noticed that mosyt people getting this problem have creative sound cards.
 
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