HL2 freezes up, dumprec.exe error

[mewithoutyou162]

My HL2 freezes up very often, almost everytime i play it. sometimes i am able to exit and sometimes i just have to shut down my computer manually. when i am able to exit, a box comes up that says "The application failed to initialize properly" with "dumprec.exe" or "dumpres.exe" as the title. How do i fix this? I should be able to run teh game on full with no problems according to the recommeded settings.

Pentium 4, 2.4ghz
Radeon 9250 card with updated drivers
740 mb ram

 

[Beerdude26]

Try validating: steam://validate/220
Also, are your DirectX drivers up to date? (9.0c December Update)

 

[mewithoutyou162]

i updated DirectX and verified and it still freezes up. i noticed that my graphics card has a different version of DirectX (8.1) than my cpu (9.0c). could this be causing it?

 

[Beerdude26]

Try running the game in DirectX 8.1 mode:
Left-click on the Steam tray icon.
Select "Games".
Click on the "My Games" tab.
Right-Click on "Half-Life 2".
Select "Properties".
Click on the "Set Launch Options..." button.
Put in the windows that pops up: -dxlevel 81
Press ok.
Now start the game through Steam.

 

[mewithoutyou162]

that didn't fix it i'm afraid. thanks for the help beerdude.

 

[Beerdude26]

Try -dxlevel 80 and if that doesn't work, -dxlevel 70 (just replace the number)