**HELP** screen flicker and then system crash...a HL2:Episode Two ONLY problem?

[red4dsc]

Yes, I did use the support pages and did a search on this forum before posting.

First the hardware details: XP, Intel P4 3.0 GHz, 2.5 GB RAM, ATI Celestica Gold Edition RADEON X600 (128 MB)

From the opening screen I have been having an issue with flickering white spots and then a hard crash in 30 sec to 5 min. This is only in HL2 Episode 2 problem. HL2 and Episode 1 both are not having issues...this seems to be exclusive for this game. Every once in awhile, ATI's "VPU Recover" will kick in and reset the video card and let me have another 30 sec to 5 min round.

I updated my BIOS, video card driver, and DirectX. I uninstalled my Ad-Aware and disabled my virus software. The support pages suggest I may have a "Paged Pool Memory Issues". I followed their instructions and found my Paged Physical value was well below the threshold. Also, I tried lowering the video and audio settings with no resolve to my problem.

Please let me know if you have any insight or suggestions. I am quite excited to get started on this game. Thanks in advance!

 

[Rennmniscant]

That system of yours seems almost perfect for running Episode 2. It may be a local glitch with some compatibility with a new feature of episode 2 and your system software.

Try perusing your video card settings (if you have any) and see if modifying those have any effect. I'm not familiar with radeons, but I know my nVidia software has an option to automatically set graphics, which I have disabled.

I'd recommend contacting Steam Support, or sending notification of an error, but don't keep high hopes. I've never heard of anyone receiving anything more than an auto-reply. If it were me, I'd just sit tight and hope they release a patch or an update to fix it.

 

[red4dsc]

Thanks for the response. I'm thinking about switching out video cards to see what happens.

 

[Laivasse]

You say your pagedpoolsize setting is low, but have you tried tweaking it? (Instructions in this thread)

However it does sound more like a display problem than anything, so perhaps trying an earlier driver version might help. Other things you can do are take some measures to reduce overheating like upping your GPU fan speed with AtiTool, or turning off fast writes/switching the AGP speed to 4x. I doubt it's an overheating issue, though, if you've already turned down the graphics settings and not seen an improvement.

Swapping the card out will most likely get rid of the problem anyway.