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Source games crashing

Anonymous
2010-02-22T23:34:20+00:00

About half of my Source engine games have been crashing randomly when I play them.  TF2 does it a lot, Portal, HL2, PVKII, and CS:S have all crashed.  When they crash, they loop the audio and completely shut off the video, my monitors don't recognize that my computer is still on.  I asked Steam Support, but after months of trying to help, they told me to either reinstall Windows, or contact Windows Support, and since I don't want to pay $50 for support that should be free anyway, which may or may not work, I came here.  I've tried fixing the memory page pool from  https://support.steampowered.com/kb\_article.php?ref=5034-EIPV-6426 , tried changing the DirectX sound acceleration, updated my drivers, reinstalling the games, updating to Windows SP3, and checking the temperature of my GPU, which never went past 44C while playing, and hovered around 40C while not playing.  Does anyone have any other ideas?

Windows for home | Other | Gaming

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  1. Anonymous
    2010-03-18T14:30:10+00:00

    Steam support gave up and told me to contact Windows support.  They've suggested uninstalling a few auxiliary programs and updating my BIOS, but nothing so far as worked.

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-03-02T23:34:34+00:00

    I use Windows XP, and I bought it used, but reinstalled Windows XP after I bought it.  It only seems to happen with Source engine games, and they can only be launched from the Steam client, all shortcuts lead to the client.  Most other games run fine.

    I have:

    AMD Athlon X2 4400 Processor

    Windows XP 32-bit

    3.5 GB DDR RAM

    NVidia GeForce 9600 graphics card

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-03-02T21:12:48+00:00

    Suiseiseki,

        Since you mention updating to SP3, I'm assuming you are running Windows XP (only assuming in case you meant SP2 which could be Vista or XP).  If you have only had the computer a few months was it a used one with an OEM install of XP or was it a built one with a clean install of XP?  Does this only happen with Steam games and does it only happen when launched from within Steam? 

    If it only seems to happen with Steam games you may want to go download a game or demo from the Games for Windows site (Tinker is free).  http://www.microsoft.com/games/en-US/index.aspx  Try a game from another site or a standalone and see if the issue persists.

    Mike - Microsoft Answers Support Engineer

    Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

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  4. Anonymous
    2010-02-23T22:28:51+00:00

    I've only had this computer for a few months now, but my Source games have crashed on it since I got it.  Every thing I listed were ideas that Steam suggested.  I'm not getting any error messages, it just seems to crash randomly and I have to hard reset.  Windows isn't logging anything about the crashes either, so I have no idea what's wrong.  But thank you very much for the tips, I'll try those.

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  5. Anonymous
    2010-02-23T20:06:55+00:00

    Hi Suiseiseki,

    §  Was it working fine earlier?

    §  Are you getting any error message?

    I’d suggest you to Perform Clean-boot and check if the Source games Engine crashes your games. Clean-boot will disable startup program and third-party services that would be causing this issue. For more information on how to troubleshoot an issue using clean boot, please see the article mentioned in the link here.

    Also see the link below for troubleshooting game crashes from Steam (if you haven’t) and follow the steps discussed in it to check if that resolves your issue. Please check if turning off Data Execution Prevention for Source Engine makes the games work properly which is also discussed in the link below.

    https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7169-TIAV-5361 Troubleshooting Game crashes Knowledge base article from steam

    If it was working fine earlier, try System Restore on SP 3 to rollback your system to an earlier state when the system configurations were working fine. Please visit the link below to restore Windows SP 3 to a previous state.

    http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/306084

    Hope this information helps!

    Yaaser - Microsoft Support Engineer

    Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think

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