HL2 Demo Problems

tsmvengy

So I got the Half Life 2 demo to see if I could actually run this - thinking about Orange Box. It ran fine in the intro, the only problem is it hangs at the first loading screen. So I go through the whole train bit and then on talking to Barney & Dr. Whatshisface and then Barney sends me out and I pick up some boxes and jump out the window, throw some beer bottles around, and then I try to go into the stairwell and it says "Loading..." and just sits there. And I can't ctrl-alt-del or alt-f4 or anything - I have to hit the reset button. Is this a known issue, does anyone know how to fix it?

Specs:
AMD Athlon64 3500+
1GB RAM
7600GT

Unicron

Can't help you on your specific problem but I have a 6600 and have been happily playing TF2 for a couple of days now, looks fine at the recommended settings. Gave HL2 a go too and that was fine, played slightly past where you're at so can't say I had the same issue.

Jeedan

My game crashed in the exact same spot. Update your graphic and sound drivers.

tsmvengy

Any idea which one of these is my sound card? I have onboard sound. This is what is listed in Device Manager under "Sound, Video, and Game Controllers:"

Audio Codecs
Legacy Audio Drivers
Legacy Video Capture Devices
Media Control Devices
MPU-401 Compatible MIDI Device
NVIDIA nForce Audio Codec Interface
Standard Game Port
Video Codecs

TychoCelchuuu

What's your mobo? If we know that we can figure out which one's your sound card.

tsmvengy

It's an A8n5X (Asus) but I think I got it figured out. I found a much more recent driver (after some digging around.) So we'll see if it works.

Haha, so now it crashes even earlier - when the guy on the monitor (welcome to city 17!) gets to the 2nd sentence of his speech.

cooljammer00

well, i ran one of those tests to see if my system can run the game.

it says i can run Half Life 2, and I can. But it says I cant run Orange Box.

What wont I be able to run? Portal? Episodes 1 and 2?

TychoCelchuuu

cooljammer, it would help if we had some system specs.

tsmvengy, did you update the graphics drivers?

cooljammer00

yeah, i barely know my system specs.

all i did was run the test on YouGamers.

i dont expect much, so Im surprised HL2 could even run. and it does.

tsmvengy

Yeah, I updated my graphics drivers as well, still same problem. The fact that now it keeps crashing on the same line leads me to believe there's something wrong with the sound drivers.

Jeedan

tsmvengy wrote: »

Yeah, I updated my graphics drivers as well, still same problem. The fact that now it keeps crashing on the same line leads me to believe there's something wrong with the sound drivers.

It is a sound problem, its a very common isue.

tsmvengy

I downgraded my sound drivers to the original version I had, then I used a switch in steam to run the game in DX 8.1 mode - and it works fine.