Problems with Source Engine games

[Guest Jeff]

Hey everyone-

I've been having some trouble with some of my games for the past few months. Almost all games I have that use the Source engine crash before they even load. The only exception to this is Half Life 2 and Lost Coast, although when I load up Lost Coast it gives me a warning that my processor only runs at 1.7ghz (I have a Centrino Duo and each core runs at 1.7ghz).

Portal, CS-Source, HL2 ep.1 and 2, and Team Fortress give me an "hl2.exe has stopped working" message right when I try to boot them up. I've tried uninstalling them and deleting the local content and re-downloading them, but the problem persists. The only other game I've bought through Steam is Bioshock, which works, although it seems to be running worse after this started happening. Even older games that I play such as Knights of the Old Republic have trouble running at times and I KNOW my computer can handle them. I have an HP Pavilion dv9000 with 2gb RAM and an nvidia GeForce GO 7600. I'm hoping someone here can at least point me in the right direction on this-- I don't consider myself particularly tech-savvy but I'm good at learning new stuff when I need to.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, even if it's just redirecting me to another forum topic.

Thanks all

-Jeff

[Dox]

whats ur driver version?

try using 175.16 from this site.

[Guest Jeff]

Just updated, but no dice. Thanks though.

I emailed Steam about it but I doubt they're going to give me any helpful advice. I just hope my GPU isn't screwed up or anything.

[Dox]

do you get "artifacts" on the screen?

like lots of multicoloured lines and dots n the screen followed by a hard freeze?

if you do means your graphics card is faulty.

[Guest Jeff]

Actually now I'm getting some horrible artifacts, but I wasn't before, definitely not when the hl2.exe error started popping up or even a few weeks ago. I was playing Knights of the Old Republic about a month ago and there definitely weren't artifacts but I just booted it up and they're everywhere now.

I guess that narrows it down. F@ck. Well I'm pretty sure this is still under warranty, so I'll have to see what I can do about getting it fixed/replaced.

Thanks for all your help man. It's not freezing yet but since the artifacts are relatively new I'm guessing my gpu is slowly progressing toward oblivion.

By the way, Cowboy Bebop is a badass show.

[Guest Jeff]

aaaand correction-- my warranty ran out FRIDAY. Wow. Just wow. Glad I handled this one responsibly.

Any advice on how to handle this? Obviously my GPU is integrated into the motherboard.. I don't think I have many options here. Next computer I get will be a desktop built from scratch with the help of my friend (probably not for several years thanks to the economy). Is there ANY way to get this repaired, or am I pretty much screwed?

[Darmdorf]

aaaand correction-- my warranty ran out FRIDAY. Wow. Just wow. Glad I handled this one responsibly.

Any advice on how to handle this?

That is really rotten luck Jeff! But I would think you should still be able to hope for a bit of "grace" from HP on this one. Do your best to be truthful about the whole affair, and if you act quickly see if they won't still 'reach you a hand'.

Obviously my GPU is integrated into the motherboard..

Actually I wouldn't think so. Most discrete notebook graphic processors are placed on some kind of plugable module, and thus can be replaced rather easily without a board change.

[Guest Guest]

A logh time,but i'm a guest and guess what i did

i updated my video card drivers and Switched to direct x 9.0c

my video chipset is Intel and has 358 video ram in it

2Gb ram are inside my computer and the dual-core processor works at 1.73Ghz

just update wo Dx9.0c and it'll work like never before

another thing is the low fps on my comp,but that ain't your problem :)