[Rictor]

Yes, please do.

It seems like every six months I come on here *****ing always about the same thing, namely that my computer keeps freezing for whatever reason, and this usually means I can't play games. Now, this time specifically, it's Half-Life 2 that's causing the troubles. After putting down $60, two months and a lot of effort, I finally have a shiny, new, legal copy of HL2 in my hands.

Install. So far so good. Enter game. ****, it froze. Restart, try again. OK, it got to the main menu this time. Start new game. Damnit, froze during loading. Restart, try again. Oh wonderful, I actually got to play this time. Freezes again at the first loading point within the game. ****. Try again. Depending on my luck, I can either get to the main menu or to the loading of actual game content, and at this point it freezes up.

The freezing is part is I assume due to the CPU getting too hot. Notice the key word is assume. So I clean out heatsink, take it off and re-apply thermal paste (cheap generic stuff, true, but I've never used anything better).  And still the same problem.  Are you supposed to yank off the heatsink and put new paste in? I don't know, but I've done it several times before (I am, of course, very gentle and careful and whatnot).

Here are the bits of information I have at my disposal, "clues" if you will, to help you "detect" the problem using "common sense" and a "basic knowledge of computer hardware", which I lack.

• About a year ago, I ran Half-Life 2 fine. In fact, I finished the game. So I know that it can run, and since then I have had to major hardware changes. I have sufficient hardware to run the likes of HL2 and Doom3 on high settings, though that seems to be about the limit (FEAR, for example, will run, but a bit sluggishly)
• Deus Ex 2 gives me the same trouble. It freezes during loading, either at the beggining or at in-game loading points. Other graphically intense game, Doom 3 and Quake 4, gave me no trouble at all.
• Checking in BIOS, the temperature right after the freeze is about 55 degrees C, whcih for an AMD64 isn't that bad, certainly not fatal.
• Sometimes when I restart after it freezes, it gives me a "CPU temperature too high" warning, and then I press F1 to continue anyway. Not always mind you, and this happens by itself on occasion.
• The freeze always seems to come when the game is loading something, never during gameplay. You would think that rendering ther game would be more CPU-intensive than loading stuff, which is harddrive intensive if anything.
• I have the latest drivers etc etc. The one thing I can think of is that I don't have the latest BIOS version, but that really shouldn't matter.
• One other unusual thing is that my PC is running with it's side panel removed, exposed if you will, and is currently on it's side. Closing it up only makes the temperature really go crazy. Does that sort of thing natter? I don't know.

Hopefully the problem is a very simple one and there's a very obvious solution which I am simply too blind and/or oblivious to figure out.

[bfobar]

It may be something besides your CPU thats overheating, like the memory sticks or the motherboard processors. Just a thought. Or it could just be a basic driver issue. I'd update all hardware drivers -- bios, video, ide card if you use one, etc, etc etc first that at least doesn't cost anything.

[WMCoolmon]

• One other unusual thing is that my PC is running with it's side panel removed, exposed if you will, and is currently on it's side. Closing it up only makes the temperature really go crazy. Does that sort of thing natter? I don't know.

That's kind of bad. What kind of cooling setup do you have?

[Rictor]

Uhm, a Thermaltake fan, I forget which one exactly (a mid-range one). I've kept it open for a good six months for whatever reason, and when I have tried closing it up it just gets really hot. I don't know the exact physics of hot air swirling around inside the case, but it seems logical that more exposure=better (except for dust, but I've recently cleaned it out.)

Do you suggest I close it up and see what happens? Also bfobar, I'll try updating my drivers and Direct X just in case, except for my BIOS which seems like a pain in the ass, though I'll have to update it, I guess, if the problem persists.

[PSI-KILLER]

Hi,
From the babyloin project area.  saw your thread and just thought I give my 2 cents, It could be you power supply starting to fail since nothing else has really changed.  EMI can be causing it too since the cover is missing . Get some canned air and power dust the entire inside.  Beleave it or not dust can cause allot of problems with heat, shorting and stuff.  I power dust every 2 months or so.  with cooling I added 4 intake fans and 4 out take fans on my case, just blowing around hot air is not good you got to get the hot out and replace with the cool.

 

[CP5670]

55C is fine. It's quite normal for the older 130nm chips and somewhat high for the 90nm ones but certainly still acceptable.

The DXIW loading crashes are a known problem for many people and may be a separate issue (the funny thing is a no CD crack usually fixes them).

Run Memtest86+ (http://www.memtest.org) for a while and see if anything comes up. Random, inexplicable crashes like that are often memory related.

[WMCoolmon]

the babyloin project

[Nix]

Grab a monitoring utility that will probe your processor and MB ambient temps, along with a HD probe.  Motherboard Monitor, although defunct, works well with most motherboards out there.  If you're looking for a more recent and up-to-date program that does this, Speedfan works pretty good.  But since your problems happen when you immediately start the game or whenever intense disk activity is happening, it'd be reasonable to say your system isn't hanging due to an overheating component.  If you had a component that heated up that fast, and that quick, you wouldnt' be able to run any sort of game that put any load on either the CPU or the GPU because it would lock up in ALL of your games.  Not just HL2.  Another reason here, DX:IW and HL2 utilize DirectX, not OpenGL, since Doom 3 and Quake 4 work perfectly fine (and use OpenGL), that would make me think something's goofed up in your video drivers, or DirectX itself.  Updating, or rather, re-updating DirectX may fix anything that's missing, and a fresh driver install might fix any other problems.  I'd reccomend Driver Cleaner to really clean up the crap that's left behind from driver installs, which gives you a fairly clean environment to put your new version of display driver on.  Monitor your system first, see if anything.  One note about updating your BIOS, if you have to do that, which would seem unnecessary to me, you may need to have the latest chipset drivers for your motherboard handy when you flash the BIOS. 

I've had a problem with both HL2 and VTM:B, both use the same engine, Source.  I had mouse-lag issues that were extremely bad, I mean, twist and wait two seconds then the camera would respond... that's how bad it was.  I would get constant lockups in HL2 and VTMB would plain refuse to run.  At first, I thought it was the new MX-1000 I bought at the time, turns out it wasn't.  It was something way deep in the system and the only solution that worked for me was very unorthodox.  Now, I'm not saying that this is the only way, and I kinda sound a little repetitive here, but the only thing that fixed my problem was a clean wipe of the hard drive, and a fresh install of XPSP2 and all the drivers at thier latest revisions.  Source tended to be extremely picky about mouse drivers, for me, in the early versions of the games.  It could be fixed now, with patches and such, but I'm not sure as I haven't loaded up HL2 on this new build of mine. 

[Flipside]

I used to get this from my Graphics Card overheating (GeForce 6600) the only way I can play graphic intensive games is to point a 16" Desk Fan into the case at full blast

[Turnsky]

55C is fine. It's quite normal for the older 130nm chips and somewhat high for the 90nm ones but certainly still acceptable.

The DXIW loading crashes are a known problem for many people and may be a separate issue (the funny thing is a no CD crack usually fixes them).

Run Memtest86+ (http://www.memtest.org) for a while and see if anything comes up. Random, inexplicable crashes like that are often memory related.

that and DXIW is not really all that well optomised, it's little wonder you're having a few problems getting it to run smoothly with all the bells and whistles, it runs less than spectacular on my radeon x850. but yeah, if it's not heat related, you might have a bad stick of ram in there somewhere

[Rictor]

Grab a monitoring utility that will probe your processor and MB ambient temps, along with a HD probe.  Motherboard Monitor, although defunct, works well with most motherboards out there.  If you're looking for a more recent and up-to-date program that does this, Speedfan works pretty good.  But since your problems happen when you immediately start the game or whenever intense disk activity is happening, it'd be reasonable to say your system isn't hanging due to an overheating component.  If you had a component that heated up that fast, and that quick, you wouldnt' be able to run any sort of game that put any load on either the CPU or the GPU because it would lock up in ALL of your games.  Not just HL2.  Another reason here, DX:IW and HL2 utilize DirectX, not OpenGL, since Doom 3 and Quake 4 work perfectly fine (and use OpenGL), that would make me think something's goofed up in your video drivers, or DirectX itself.  Updating, or rather, re-updating DirectX may fix anything that's missing, and a fresh driver install might fix any other problems.  I'd reccomend Driver Cleaner to really clean up the crap that's left behind from driver installs, which gives you a fairly clean environment to put your new version of display driver on.  Monitor your system first, see if anything.  One note about updating your BIOS, if you have to do that, which would seem unnecessary to me, you may need to have the latest chipset drivers for your motherboard handy when you flash the BIOS. 

I've had a problem with both HL2 and VTM:B, both use the same engine, Source.  I had mouse-lag issues that were extremely bad, I mean, twist and wait two seconds then the camera would respond... that's how bad it was.  I would get constant lockups in HL2 and VTMB would plain refuse to run.  At first, I thought it was the new MX-1000 I bought at the time, turns out it wasn't.  It was something way deep in the system and the only solution that worked for me was very unorthodox.  Now, I'm not saying that this is the only way, and I kinda sound a little repetitive here, but the only thing that fixed my problem was a clean wipe of the hard drive, and a fresh install of XPSP2 and all the drivers at thier latest revisions.  Source tended to be extremely picky about mouse drivers, for me, in the early versions of the games.  It could be fixed now, with patches and such, but I'm not sure as I haven't loaded up HL2 on this new build of mine. 

Hrmm, interesting. I downloaded Motherboard Monitor and apparently the idle temperature on my CPU is between 43 and 50 C, and 30-40C on my mobo, which again leads me to believe it isn't overheating. I'll try playing around with Driver Cleaner and DirectX drivers. Hopefully I won't have to reinstall Windows, but it so it's due anyway. Valve's support site also mentions something about manually re-adding HL2 to the exceptions list on your firewall if the game is crashing or locking up during loading, but given that's I've managed to play both HL2 and CS:S, however briefly, I don't think that's it.

Anyway, thanks for the advice.

[Turnsky]

Hrmm, interesting. I downloaded Motherboard Monitor and apparently the idle temperature on my CPU is between 43 and 50 C, and 30-40C on my mobo, which again leads me to believe it isn't overheating. I'll try playing around with Driver Cleaner and DirectX drivers. Hopefully I won't have to reinstall Windows, but it so it's due anyway. Valve's support site also mentions something about manually re-adding HL2 to the exceptions list on your firewall if the game is crashing or locking up during loading, but given that's I've managed to play both HL2 and CS:S, however briefly, I don't think that's it.

Anyway, thanks for the advice.

sounds like the idle temp on my PC, so you're fine there, check your ram, though, you'd be surprised how often a bad stick of ram causes system instability. mind you, the only way to "fix" a bad stick of ram is replacement.

[Nix]

Your temperatures look just fine.  If it was about 60-70 then I'd be worried.  Have you dug around in the settings for Motherboard Monitor and found the sensors for your hard drives?  That'd be something interesting to look at, but I highly doubt that an overheating HD would cause these problems.  Well, usually a reformat will fix everything, but it's not worth it if you just want to play the game.  I'm really convinced that it's either faulty hardware, like the RAM issue suggested, or the software issues that I've suggested.  I'd really think it would have something to do with Direct3D itself still because you'd probably get wicked memory errors in Doom 3 and Quake 4 as well.  Since it looks like you're not getting memory errors in those programs, I'd say it's drivers or Windows.