Valve Source Engine games black screen and crash!

[jtohahn]

So, this is my first post here on Tom’s Hardware. I have an IBM Thinkpad T30 (Intel P4 1.9GHz, ATI Radeon Mobility 7500) running Windows XP SP3. I have looked around and seen that the Mobility 7500 can run games like Portal and HL2, so I decided to try it for myself. The Steam install went completely fine, and I downloaded the games, also fine. So cool, I go to run HL2, it starts to a black screen, plays the first half second or so of the Valve music, and crashes, no errors or anything. Same exact thing happens with Portal and Counter-Strike Source, however CS original does work because it is not a Source game. I have tried reinstalling multiple graphics drivers, restarting, reinstalling the games and verifying the files, setting -windowed and -dxlevel 81, 70, and 60 (all of which should work) in the launch options of each game, and even reinstalling Windows XP! Nothing works, and I can’t find anything else online. What should I do??


Edit: I got VERY close, setting the -dev and -dxlevel 70 launch options actually loaded Counter-Strike Source. I was able to set the graphics to low, create a server, and choose my team and player model. However, after selecting my player model (the animations of which were smooth, no lag), the game crashed.

Edit 2: the Video Stress Test on the main menu of CSS also crashes the game before it starts. Also, even after setting the dxlevel, the “Software DirectX level” still says DirectX 9.0, while my hardware is DX 8.0. Is the dxlevel option working properly?

 

[taokhongten75]

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