Half-Life 2 crashes, no matter what in-game settings I choose

[Remmy]

Processor - AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (2.21ghz)
Video Card - nVidia GeForce 7600 GS 512mb
RAM - 1 GB
Power Supply - 400 Watt

I've tried multiple in-game setting, and nothing seems to work. Half of the time, I crash when I get attacked. Even before you get suited up in the HEV suit, getting hit by a police officer will sometimes freeze me. Running though the canals after the teleporter incident in the beginning seems to give me the most grief. The game will freeze, sometimes the sound will stutter, and then my entire computer will either freeze, or the game will just crash and I'll be returned to Steam. If I play any of the multiplayer games, or Half-Life 1 Source, I don't crash whatsoever. Thanks for any help.


-Remmy

[CrazyCrusher]

What driver's are you running with your 7600? OS also would help XP Pro/Home 2000?

[CrazyCrusher]

try this out to, back ur games up in steam before you do anything.
http://forum.theshiponline.com/showthread.php?t=1904

[Remmy]

The driver I have for the nVidia 7600 GS is "6.14.10.9371," the latest one.

And my OS is XP Home Edition, with Service Pack 2.

[Remmy]

Oh, also. I just now tried all of those ideas from that thread you gave me, none of them worked. Forcing a lower DirectX version, "-window," etc. But occassionally I also get this message saying, "The instruction at '0x241f94f7' referenced memory at '0x0d8cf41c'. The memory could not be 'read'." The crashes are just random now, happening in seconds, sometimes after minutes...

[CrazyCrusher]

When you say you have 1 Gig how many sticks is it? That error may mean you might have too many RAM modules in your PC or may have a memory timing issue, have you OC your memory or anything else, try removing one of the memory sticks and run the game again, do you have any benchmarks on your system? like 3dmark06?

[rmanet]

suspect the PSU and/or what AGP does your mobo support - 2x, 4x, 8x??

[Remmy]

suspect the PSU and/or what AGP does your mobo support - 2x, 4x, 8x??

It is 8x. http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=607

[rmanet]

then my guess is PSU - if your video card is overheating normally your machine'll shutdown, reboot

[Remmy]

Ok, well I just took out one of my two 512 ram sticks, and the problem has stopped. Occassionally it'll hitch for a second, but then just keep on running fine. Has removing the stick freed some power from the supply? Is that why it would help? I can play games like Vanguard fairly decently, I'm not sure how that compares in terms of system strain to Half Life 2. In a few hours I can post a system benchmark.

[CrazyCrusher]

For some reason HL2 has some issues running on some system (not all mind you just a small % of machine's) when using more than two Sticks, Im not sure if there is a fix for it or not, it runs fine on my system with 2 1 Gig sticks. the memory you pulled from the system are both stick's the same maker? or different manufacturers ? I don't think its a PSU problem to be honest (I may be wrong) I have helped some other people out in the past with the same issue, it ended up being the memory stick problem.

Post the bench marks and post the temps for your Video card.