Half Life keeps crashing out in Vista?

keogh · 19 Oct 2007 at 18:08

Howdy,

I don't Orange Box yet, I completed HL2 when it come out, then bought EP1 a long time after it was released, but never finished it. I've never played either on Vista, always on XP and never had any probs.

Well I decided to try and finish EP1 now that EP2 is out, but the game keeps crashing now that I am in Vista 32bit... does this happen for anyone else?

Sometimes I will get a "This program is not responding" on the intro screen (the dude with the valve as an eye). The it will just crash in game, and go back to desktop. Most of the time, when I hit quick save it just crashes and I end up back at the desktop! I cannot change resolution in game cos it crashes then.

Its unplayable really, cos I don't know if the quick save will work, and I could get far and save, and then BLAM it will die on me!

Surely I'm not the only one with Vista 32bit issues right? Anything I can do to make it a bit more stable (apart from going back to XP)?

Any help will be appreciated!

ta

liam8582007 · 19 Oct 2007 at 18:11

Try Compatibility mode, right click the shortcut and compatibility tab, run it in Windows XP mode.

Liam

keogh · 19 Oct 2007 at 18:22

Ill give it ago, just got a new error now when going into a new area (i.e. the "Loading..." comes up). Go a "Engine Error" and it threw me back to the desktop with the error "Can't load lump 53, allocation of 10673193 failed!!!"

Its all over the place on Vista... well for me it is anyway?

Zogger · 19 Oct 2007 at 18:31

I seem to recall you need this hotfix for that error message:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940105

I haven't experienced it, but I installed this hotfix before playing for the crysis beta...

modo77 · 19 Oct 2007 at 18:37

Yes its that hotfix, you dont need to run in compatibility mode

something daft already!! · 19 Oct 2007 at 19:24

I dont get any crashes with Nvidia driver 163.75 beta. Are you using this driver or an older one?

HangTime · 19 Oct 2007 at 19:46

I found HL2 was quite sensitive to system instability, especially memory overclocks. Try running at stock speeds and see if the error still occurs (regardless of whether your system is prime stable or not).

keogh · 20 Oct 2007 at 14:23

HangTime said:
I found HL2 was quite sensitive to system instability, especially memory overclocks. Try running at stock speeds and see if the error still occurs (regardless of whether your system is prime stable or not).

Maybe, but Id rather not play it if I have to put my PC back to stock, im running the game at 2560x1600, so taking my C2D back to stock 2.4ghz and my RAM back wont do me any favours.

The error I mentioned above as gone, I think the fix you guys suggested (cheers) fixed that, and I am also running it in compatibilty mode, but it still crashes sometimes when I quick save!

All other crashes have gone... for now, just I cant play it if I cant save. So I won;t bother with it I don't think, shame cos I was starting to get back into it!

martin9887 · 20 Oct 2007 at 14:30

Have you tried disabling DEP? it caused me no end of problems with Half Life games on Vista.

To turn it off, run a command prompt as admin (right click, run as admin), then type in this command,

bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff

Then restart your PC.

keogh · 20 Oct 2007 at 15:32

before i do that, what is DEP?

modo77 · 20 Oct 2007 at 15:38

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Execution_Prevention

Anim · 20 Oct 2007 at 15:52

I had hl2 regularly freeze up on me, out of date drivers was the cause.

keogh · 20 Oct 2007 at 17:04

Well disabling DEP seemed to have worked for me, so cheers martin! I managed to complete it without any hitches, and usually it would have crashed out by that point!

ta