Counter-Strike Source crashes

[bzzkff]

Hey all,

So I've been a CS player for a decade now, and have been extremely frustrated with recent developments.

When I play online, I can get in anywhere between 1 - 10 minutes of fun, and then it seems that my GPU crashes. The screen goes into a bunch or horizontal lines, and the last sound heard from the game loops over and over again. After trying to find an answer on the web, as well as repeated restarts, I feel that I am actually starting to go crazy.

I have reinstalled the game and Steam several times, from hdd to external drives; even to an ssd. All this to no avail.

My BIOS is up to date, as well as my drivers.

Yesterday, I was able to access my desktop during one of the many crashes I experienced, just in time to see a notification from my icon tray advising me that my video card driver had "stopped working" and had successfully restored itself. This however, did not restore my game. It seems that the driver itself is crashing and this brings up many wtfs from me since I can easily play BF3 and MW3 online - at pimping resolutions - and *never* encounter any problems.

I've already emailed Steam "support" and have not heard back from them.

My next step is to load up an older display driver for my GPU, to see if the problem is arising from a conflict between the latest AMD drivers and Counter Strike Source.

Meanwhile, I'm curious to know if anyone has had this issue, and if so, how they were able to fix it, if at all.

Not sure if my sig will show up so here are my related particulars:

Motherboard: Asus P7P55D-E Pro
CPU: Intel Core i5 750 @ 2.67 GHz
HSF: Noctua NH-D14
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 4 x 4Gb
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 4670
PSU: Thermaltake TR2 500W
HDD1: Western Digital 120Gb 7200 rpm
HDD2: Western Digital Black 2Tb 7200 rpm
HDD3: IOmega 1Tb USB 3.0 External Drive
SSD: Kingston 64Gb SATA II 3Gb/s
ODD: Samsung SH-S222A
Case: Corsair Obsidian 650D
Monitors: Acer X233H / Acer AL1706
Speakers: Logitech Z640 5.1 Dolby Surround (mobo audio)
Keyboard: Corsair K60
Mouse: Corsair M60
OS: Windows 7 Home Ultimate SP1 (64 bit)

Thanks,
Buzz


***UPDATE***
Rolling back to a previous display driver did not work.

 

[Carpy2]

I had this issue a while ago, this might help fix it. What was happening for me was that CS:S was not prioritized so either my CPU or GPU (I forgot) was trying to run the whole game by itself. Try this:

Right click on CS:S -> properties -> general tab -> set launch options.

Type this in without the quotes: "-high -dxlevel 95"

The high makes CS:S the main priority for your system, the dxlevel forces CS:S to run at the max direct x level it can (I think it maxes out at only 10). If it still crashes, try running it in openGL mode by adding to the end of the line in your launch options "-gl", or you can try forcing it to run as direct3D by typing in "-d3d". Only put one or the other in at one time.

Hope this helps, CSS is pretty frustrating no doubt.

 

[bzzkff]

I had this issue a while ago, this might help fix it. What was happening for me was that CS:S was not prioritized so either my CPU or GPU (I forgot) was trying to run the whole game by itself. Try this:

Right click on CS:S -> properties -> general tab -> set launch options.

Type this in without the quotes: "-high -dxlevel 95"

The high makes CS:S the main priority for your system, the dxlevel forces CS:S to run at the max direct x level it can (I think it maxes out at only 10). If it still crashes, try running it in openGL mode by adding to the end of the line in your launch options "-gl", or you can try forcing it to run as direct3D by typing in "-d3d". Only put one or the other in at one time.

Hope this helps, CSS is pretty frustrating no doubt.

Hi Carpy2 -

I got really excited when I saw your reply because it was the first time I'd read something new about attempting to fix this. Sadly, it didn't work. I discovered all sorts of cool resolution settings that could be achieved though, and that was fun, but the game still froze as before.

Having said that, by using the "-high" setting alone, I've been able to squeeze out an extra 10 minutes of gameplay than before, so thank very much for that! Seriously!

But yeah, still trying to work on figuring this out...

Cheers
Buzz

 

[bzzkff]

Best answer selected by bzzkff.

 

[bzzkff]

After a lot of back and forth with Steam, sending msinfo32 .nfo files, and getting their feedback, turns out their game has compatibility issues with Avast antivirus and I/OBit software. I had to completely *uninstall* and remove their software from my system before I could enjoy uninterrupted gameplay devoid of crashes and freezes.

Surprisingly, Steam placed the onus on the other two, advising me that I need to find a way to create exceptions to Counter Strike Source in their software, contacting I/OBit and Avast directly, if needed.

So Carpy2, thanks again for the suggestion; thanks to your input I was able to start exploring ways to enhance my gameplay with start-up settings! CSS looks wicked in 1080p when I use the -d3d extension... 😉

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey