Half life 2 locking up my system

[tarnjotsingh]

Im having an issue with Half life 2, the problem is that once i select the option to start a new game and the cutscene of g-man comes up there is freezing and sound stuttering, once it starts after a while my screen goes black then the cutscene carries on till im standing in the train.
Once i get off the train i basicly walk in the direction of that guy on the big screen and once i get close enough my whole system locks up; cntl+alt+del wont work alt+tab wont work and i have to reboot my system via the restart button on my machine.
Ive had a look around other fourms that have similar problems, most of the suggestions seemed to be the obvious ones i.e making sure that all my drivers were up to date, reinstall the game, verify the cache integrity, defrag the game files and i even put '-32bit' into the launch options for hl2 but nothing seems to resolve the issue im having.
This freezing is happening in the same exact location, at the exact point within the game and i have no clue why its doing this.
I bought the game with the orange box and hl2 episode 1 and 2, portal and tf2 work fine. Even have counter strike source and garrys mod and they work flawlessly, yet hl2 is the one that is having the problems.
My system can easily play this game; within lost coast i ran a benchmark and had an average fps of over 200fps, so im definitely sure it inst my hardware.

System specs:

CPU: Intel core i3 2100
GPU: Sapphire radeon hd 7770
MoBo: Asus p8p67
Ram: 8gb (4 x 2gb) corsiar xms3
Primary hdd: Seagate barracuda 1tb (also have an external seagate hdd which is also 1tb)

 

[Brett928S2]

Hi

Did you reinstall through STEAM ?

All the best Brett

 

[tarnjotsingh]

Yh thats exactly how i reinstalled the game :/

 

[HEXiT]

my guess is to check the dx diag is installed from the install folder after the game is installed... run it with admin privs to make sure its properly installed...
check the control pannel/admin tools/event viewer/apps fo game errors...
if its something like 0x0c5 then you may have an unstable overclock or bad memory.

you can run superpi 32m test to see if you have a memory fault if it locks up then its likely you either haven't set HPET (high precision events timer) to enabled or 32/64(to match your o.s bit rate 32/64bit) in bios or your mem is bad at some point... use memtest to then find out where it is exactly if needed.

if all that is useless then it will be a case of disabling and enabling certain sound devices... turning off realtech 95/97 and using a sopund card will often sort out system instability cause by dodgey realtech drivers.
if you have it turn of amd hd audio if its not being used same for any other sound output that isnt your primary.

 

[tarnjotsingh]

Ill have a try once i get home, but im not sure that its actualy my hardware as ive stresstested my system (with 3dmark 06, vantage and 11) and played all my other games (bf3, crysis, far cry2 and many others) and all of them never had an issue like this. Its more to do with half life 2 itself rather than my hardware or software. imo its more to do with memory leaks or something along those lines or having a bug with the source engine which is the most likely issue.

 

[AntiZig]

HL2 is itchy with the sound problems. I've recently replayed it on my laptop, whenever it had an elaborate sound sequence playing it would stutter. I'm not sure whether this is something to do with HDD access time or something else. As hexit mentioned, update your audio chipset drivers. If that doesn't help, try disabling the chipset.

Lastly, try running in compatibility mode for winxp and make sure to check the box to disable visual themes (it will turn off aero while the game is running).

 

[tarnjotsingh]

Somehow ive got it to work, i went through some settings and i think its the HDR(high dynamic range) feature in the source engine thats screwing with my system. Turned it down to the second option (bloom if available) and it seems to be running fine. Its in windowed mode aswell if that makes a difference, but honestly i realy couldent care less at least im able to play the game ive purchased

 

[tarnjotsingh]

since i cant edit my post, thanks for the suggestions i realy appreciate it but hey i have managed to solve it myself

feel free to mark this thread as solved