Game crash, PLEASE HELP!

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JDHam

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I can't seem to get past a crash. I am in 'This Vortal Coil", right after running from the Antlion Guardian and then falling through the shaft where the Guardian gets his head stuck.

I have a Core 2 Duo with an 8600 GTS (256mb). I have reloaded earlier saves to no avail. I have turned down all the graphics options, no joy. Please help! I love this game but I am getting really frustrated.
 
I've got the exact same problem. I've tried everything from turning down directx to expanding my memory pool cache. I'm honestly considering skipping the whole chapter and moving on.
 
esplin said:
I've got the exact same problem. I've tried everything from turning down directx to expanding my memory pool cache. I'm honestly considering skipping the whole chapter and moving on.
Click to expand...

God, I hope that is not the answer! I would really ahte to shorten the game.
 
This Problem and the "Bunny Hopping on Gravel" seem to have popped up after the latest Patch.

There should probably be a Fix soon.
 
can report i am having this problem as well, am not best pleased !

how quick are valve usually at fixing these things?
 
Ram, perhaps, my game has never crashed, unless I spawned an advisor but i used to have really low paged pool memory, and until I increased my Ram was causing a console error, now its fine
 
Nicky 0123 said:
Ram, perhaps, my game has never crashed, unless I spawned an advisor but i used to have really low paged pool memory, and until I increased my Ram was causing a console error, now its fine
Click to expand...

3 gigs for me, so I doubt that is it.
 
DItto...

Exact same problem, exact same spot. 4 Gig RAM, dual 8800 GTS, current drivers. This is my first HL2 crash - ever - I was very surprised.

If they read these at all, I hope they catch this and fix it soon. I'm stuck till they do!

~Auto

...back to Peggle...
 
Exact same problem. Happened yesterday. Have already played through game once so I don't get it.
 
If you can, don't try and skip the whole chapter

You won't see the G-man, and his awesomeness, unless of course you look on YouTube
 
this is where i crash too
Can someone post a save game just after that point since i do not want to loose any story material by skipping the chapter?
 
I get the same problem. I read on another forum that if you face the right side and then crouch and strafe left all the way to the web you can avoid the crash. I did this once and it worked but then forgot to save, got killed and now it won't work for me anymore.

It can't be my specs as I have a Q6700, 8800GTX and 2GB 900mhz memory.
 
Thanks DJT298, that worked like a charm for me. I just crouched on the right hand side and faced away from the web until I got to it. Walking backwards under that pipe thing.
 
Did exactly what djt298 wrote and on the 10th try i made it, thnx....
 
DJT298 said:
I get the same problem. I read on another forum that if you face the right side and then crouch and strafe left all the way to the web you can avoid the crash. I did this once and it worked but then forgot to save, got killed and now it won't work for me anymore..
Click to expand...

Same problem. I just tried the above suggestion and it worked on the second try. Thank you
 
Hi,
Just chiming in to say that I also have had this problem and that facing left and strafing fixed it for me as well.

ATI Radeon x1900, 2gbs of ram on an AMD Opteron so (given all the nVidia cards above) I'm guessing its not HW/driver related.
 
ok this works for me, thank you so much !

BUT, literally 5 minutes on from this point of the game, when I'm sitting through the speech from G-Man, i'm getting the exact same crash. anyone who had the previous problem also getting this one?
 
I did the first time but I went for the 'dont look back' approach. Im past G-Man's speech so it seems ok now.
 
Dan Smith said:
ok this works for me, thank you so much !

BUT, literally 5 minutes on from this point of the game, when I'm sitting through the speech from G-Man, i'm getting the exact same crash. anyone who had the previous problem also getting this one?
Click to expand...


My game was freezing at the antlion area as well and the crouching/strafing worked without any problems.............now I am getting the same game crash as above during the cinematic sequence with Gman
how do I get through this????

this whole Steam thing is frustrating as hell, I liked games back when you just bought em and loaded em up and played without problem
 
I had this same exact crash. X1900XTX, even took it out and put in my old 6600GT same thing. Did the stare at the wall and strafe trick, worked like a charm.

During the G-Man's speech I thought it crashed but turns out it just kicked back out to the Windows Desktop. I just clicked on the HL2 icon on the Task Bar and viola got through it.
 
crewnutz said:
this whole Steam thing is frustrating as hell, I liked games back when you just bought em and loaded em up and played without problem
Click to expand...

Them were the days alright.

Back when they couldn't keep tweaking and screwing around with our games once we got them home...

Someone should form a resistance against intrusive game developers. They're as bad as the Combine.
 
Awesome!

Worked for me first time through. Just keep strafing till you hit the web. Must be something "wrong" with an object it tries to render down the web hall when you get close or something.

Thanks a bunch!
 
Any update on the crash bug? I have the problem with the G-man's scripted sequence. He gets about 45 seconds or so into it and then the sound starts stuttering and then I can't do anything - control+alt+delete, the windows key, alt+F4, nothing works. I have to reboot the machine.

Any thoughts are appreciated. Right now I have 2 ghz processor with 512MB RAM and an older Geforce FX 5700. I've got some more RAM on the way, because I needed it anyway, and bestbuy.com has 1GB sticks on sale for $28. Maybe that will fix it if nothing else will.
 
As soon as the lead vort begins glowing violet, the sound beings to sputter and the image drops to about 2fps. Perhaps the texture of the vorts is too much for some machines? However my old graphics card handled a similar problem in EP One by really half-assing it (replaced a 3D textured model with a wire frame model). I put up with that because the game continued to play, but this Vortigaunt/G-man sequence will take way too long.

Any help is greatly appreciated.
 
I had the exact same crashing problem at the exact same spot as everyone else on this forum. The fix everyone discussed here really helped and I'm grateful that you've all prevented me from wasting $50 on the Orange Box package. Anyway, I just finished the game just now. I don't want to spoil it but I couldn't believe how emotional I got at the very end - I did a HL2, HL2Ep1, and HL2Ep2 marathon all week so I guess the characters got to me. The Episode 2 climax battle was much more difficult than HL2 and HL2Ep1.

For the record, here are 3 more points at which the game crashed and the fixes which I used:

1) The one we just mentioned in this forum thread (walking toward the mine after outrunning the antlion guardian).

2) In the beginning of the 'Our Mutual Fiend' chapter: As soon as you get off the car with Alyx to meet other resistance fighters you go inside the White Forest silo base where there is an open room where there is a group of other resistance fighters sitting and having a conversation. If you walk up to the people, it crashes. Good thing is that you don't have to walk up to the people to finish the game (I guess you can make the claim that you're not an eavesdropper). So to fix, simply do not walk up to the group of people talking (I didn't try crouching and strafing although that would probably work too, I just avoided going to them and it worked. I was even able to check out other areas of this room - I checked out every area of the room except the people sitting and talking).

3) In the middle of the 'Our Mutual Fiend' chapter: You're inside the base and you are instructed to go to the silo. There is a scene where you are about to fight 3 hunters. Just before you go to the area where the hunters are, you have to go through a corridor similar to the mine sequence and this is where it crashes, very similar to the #1 crash above. To fix, simply turn your back on the hunters by facing the wall to your left and look at nothing but the wall as you strafe right (again very similar to the #1 case). You'll probably get hit a few times but most likely will be minor damage. After you pass this one area in the corridor everything will be ok again and you can face the hunters and defeat them.

4) Between the middle and end of the 'Our Mutual Fiend' chapter just before the climactic end battle: One of your missions was to close the silo door of the base. After much fighting with the Combine you finally accomplish this and it takes place on the highest platform of the silo. After the silo door closes, Alyx comes up to greet and congratulate you with another scientist. As you go to her, the game crashes. The fix is to walk towards her backwards - do not look at her as you go to her (it feels kind of weird because she's congratulating you and talking to you as you're turning your back to her).

I honestly think Valve released this game too soon. It feels more like a beta version. Anyway, I am almost certain that other people will also experience at least one or more of these crashes and I hope what I mentioned here helps.
 
Instead of fixing individual "bugs/crashes" why can't just get rid of the whole "looping sound/lockup/crash" thing that has plagued HL2 from the beginning?

By the way thanks for the face right/straife left thing, got me past that point. It seems that the dead medic dude on the left might be causing the problem. Once you get past that spot and turn around and come back, it crashes when you get close to and have the medic dude in sight.
 
I sneaked past the point where the dead medic is in the mines but I encountered 2 more crashes (1 of them which I avoided).


This crash report might have contained mild spoilers. Deal with it lol.


When you reach White Forest you enter the silo and the game crashes (where injured people lay on the ground). (look to the right and/or on the ground and just move through).

And in MY MUTUAL FIEND, where you crawl around and hunters attack. It just locks up. The usual thing.


Why is there no patch for this kinda shit? I feel robbed by Valve.
 
Nothing extra to report, just another case of the exact same lockup, got by it the same way, strafing while facing the right wall. I did lock up again after I got past it and into the next room, I looked back -- so don't do that!

I had no problem with the scripted G-man sequence, but I haven't gotten to the other trouble spots mentioned yet.

Here's some things I tried before finding this thread - the stuff that didn't help:

  • Updated my DirectX 9.0c to the latest build
  • Added Valve's suggested startup options (I forget the exact syntax) that dumbs down your DirectX to v.7, and makes the game run in a window
  • Turned my video settings WAY down including all the stuff in Advanced
  • Had Steam scan my game cache files (clean) then renamed my game folder and restarted to make it reload from the GCFs
  • Flashed the BIOS on my MoBo to latest
  • Updated the Intel chip drivers
  • Updated video drivers
  • Updated NIC drivers
  • Updated RAID controller firmware
  • Ran Memtest86 for several passes - clean
  • Stopped overclocking, set it to stock speed
  • Set RAM timings very conservative (slower than stock)
  • Stopped lots of unneeded Windows services
  • Stopped all traces of my antivirus (McAfee)
  • Made sure NO other 3rd party software was running
  • Adjusted my PagedPoolSize registry value per suggestions in another thread here
  • Set my pagefile size to 4 GB and made sure it was not fragmented, with PageDefrag.

Almost all of those were tried one at a time, with a reboot and another try to get by that damn spot in the game - something like 3 or 4 hours of banging my head against a wall -- FUN!!

I list all that more or less to tell you all not to bother with those steps, for this particular problem anyway. Though lots of those steps are generally good advice... They don't fix this bug.
 
That's It!!!!

Bulgie,

IT WORKS

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!! your solution has allowed me to get passed the G-man.

Best regards,
Dave
 
Outlier2004 said:
I had the exact same crashing problem at the exact same spot as everyone else on this forum. The fix everyone discussed here really helped and I'm grateful that you've all prevented me from wasting $50 on the Orange Box package. Anyway, I just finished the game just now. I don't want to spoil it but I couldn't believe how emotional I got at the very end - I did a HL2, HL2Ep1, and HL2Ep2 marathon all week so I guess the characters got to me. The Episode 2 climax battle was much more difficult than HL2 and HL2Ep1.

For the record, here are 3 more points at which the game crashed and the fixes which I used:

1) The one we just mentioned in this forum thread (walking toward the mine after outrunning the antlion guardian).

2) In the beginning of the 'Our Mutual Fiend' chapter: As soon as you get off the car with Alyx to meet other resistance fighters you go inside the White Forest silo base where there is an open room where there is a group of other resistance fighters sitting and having a conversation. If you walk up to the people, it crashes. Good thing is that you don't have to walk up to the people to finish the game (I guess you can make the claim that you're not an eavesdropper). So to fix, simply do not walk up to the group of people talking (I didn't try crouching and strafing although that would probably work too, I just avoided going to them and it worked. I was even able to check out other areas of this room - I checked out every area of the room except the people sitting and talking).

3) In the middle of the 'Our Mutual Fiend' chapter: You're inside the base and you are instructed to go to the silo. There is a scene where you are about to fight 3 hunters. Just before you go to the area where the hunters are, you have to go through a corridor similar to the mine sequence and this is where it crashes, very similar to the #1 crash above. To fix, simply turn your back on the hunters by facing the wall to your left and look at nothing but the wall as you strafe right (again very similar to the #1 case). You'll probably get hit a few times but most likely will be minor damage. After you pass this one area in the corridor everything will be ok again and you can face the hunters and defeat them.

4) Between the middle and end of the 'Our Mutual Fiend' chapter just before the climactic end battle: One of your missions was to close the silo door of the base. After much fighting with the Combine you finally accomplish this and it takes place on the highest platform of the silo. After the silo door closes, Alyx comes up to greet and congratulate you with another scientist. As you go to her, the game crashes. The fix is to walk towards her backwards - do not look at her as you go to her (it feels kind of weird because she's congratulating you and talking to you as you're turning your back to her).

I honestly think Valve released this game too soon. It feels more like a beta version. Anyway, I am almost certain that other people will also experience at least one or more of these crashes and I hope what I mentioned here helps.
Click to expand...


My game crashes at another spot, that is, where the car engine burns up and there is that helo you need to destroy at the end of the RR tracks. I can't get past this point no matter what. Any suggestions would be most appreciated.

thanks.
 
My game didn't crash at that point so I'm not sure what would work (by the way, I also got past the G-Man script with no problem). The best way to find a fix is through trial and error. In most of the previous crashes, it crashes because you're looking at a particular object/person which for some reason causes the crash. So then try to avoid that object. Try looking only left and strafing right. If that doesn't work try looking only right and strafing left. If that doesn't work try walking backwards. If that doesn't work try looking only upwards at the sky.

You could also try that console command that was talked about earlier in this thread. There is also another possible console command that I read about in another forum where someone said they first dropped down the console, typed 'sv_cheats 1' to enable any cheats and then typed 'noclip' and went around the problem area through the walls (he said he did this to get around the first mine crash). I never tried this myself so I don't know if it'll work.

If none of this helps and if you feel you're the only person experiencing this crash at this location, then it might even be possible that you have a faulty installation of the software. If that's the case, delete the game and then re-download and re-install it. Judging by other people reporting crashes though, this is probably unlikely. You're probably experiencing the same graphics crash as everyone else is.

Good luck and let us know how it went...
 
Wooah! I was all like "damn, might have to complain about this" yesterday when it happened again. I couldn't get it to work, no matter how many repeats or loads. Even tried a different load point, didn't work. Annoyed because I'm attempting the grub squashing acheivment >,<.

Glad to know it's not a hardware problem. *waits for Valve*
 
SkyRat said:
My game crashes at another spot, that is, where the car engine burns up and there is that helo you need to destroy at the end of the RR tracks. I can't get past this point no matter what. Any suggestions would be most appreciated.

thanks.
Click to expand...

Yeah, mine also happens when you drive up to the first radio tower at the start of Riding Shotgun. If I want to continue, I usually have to open the console and load the next nearby map. But even then, it's only a matter of time before I find another one. Ep1, Portal, HL2 and every other game I own still work flawlessly though. I'll come back to Ep2 in a week when hopefully they've patched it.
 
This is balls. r_rootlod 3 did not work for me. G-Man script is still painfully choppy. Maybe I (my system) just suck(s). I'll try it again with everything turned down and see if that gets me anywhere.
 
Anyone play today?

At least for me, the new updates on Steam completely eradicated all the memory problems I was having. Works great. Thanks Valve.
 
Just so everyone knows, it appears Valve has been listening to all of us and they've fixed the crashes with a Steam update:

http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=news&id=1329&cc=US

This new Steam update fixed all of my 4 crash points, including the one inside the White Forest silo base where the resistance fighters are talking about the difference between an A2 and A3. I'm glad they did this quickly. It's great to have forums like these, there's strength in numbers and all of our discussions most definitely helped in getting such a quick fix from Valve.
 
Thanks for this guys, this was the first crash I have ever experienced with any HL game. Was getting frustrated.
 
I can't believe you're stilling getting crashes. Were your crashes at the exact same points that we've mentioned in this thread? Didn't Steam automatically update your software before you started the game? I thought this thread would have become obsolete after this update.

Anyway, thanks for thanking us. It's good to know that the stuff we've researched and shared with each other has benefitted someone, even months afterward.
 
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