Half Life 2 crashes

[Archmaster0]

I've been playing Half Life 2 for about a year now. About 2 weeks ago, i bought a new hard drive. I installed Steam, logged into the account I've always used, and downloaded the games I wanted. Whenever I run HL2 or Episode 1, I either get a BSOD or my screens become "inactive" and I have to reboot my computer. I've also run the "Verify Integrity of Game Cache" from the game's properties menu in Steam and it said it was fine. If you guys need a DxDiag or anything, I'll post it later. I just tried Half Life 2 again. I got a BSOD caused by "nv4_disp".

 

[Xendance]

Posting your DxDiag later just means you will recieve help later.

 

[Link]

nv4_disp an nvidea driver error? You running the latest drivers for your gear?

 

[plinky]

Have you checked to see if your video card GPU is overheating??? I had a similar incident and the heatsinks on the video card were full of dust bunnies. Installed a Zalman heatsink and fan and everything is fine.
I used NV Templogger and enabled the logging option. Then played the game until it crashed, then read the temp log on my desktop. The GPU temp was reading about 84 C under load (XFX 6800GT). Now it sits around 73 C under heavy load, about 55 or less at idle.