# BSOD and abrupt restart while playing Half Life 2: Episode Two



## rohanprabhu (Jul 16, 2007)

I recently downloaded Half Life 2: episode two via steam. It launches fine and the intro video plays fine. But when the actual game starts.. after i make a few movements.. a blue screen is shown. A totally blue screen. There is nothing written on it.. it's just a blue screen. I reinstalled windows.. and after that there is no blue screen. The computer just restarts and when it does, I am notified that the system recovered from a serious error.

Drivers are not the problem. I have installed and reinstalled the drivers for my cards, rollbacked to previous versions, tried on the latest versions and reinstalled directX.. all that has been done.

Half Life 2, Half Life 2: Episode Two and Half Life: Lost Coast run perfectly on my PC.

Specs:

Windows XP MCE [SP2]
Intel Pentium 3.06 GHz
ATI X200 onboard chipset [sharing 256MB RAM]
1 GB RAM [768 available]


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## bobbydiaz (Sep 19, 2007)

Usually when you get restarts its either a power supply issue or heat issue, heat issues normally will show up in the event log. Getting the blue screen then restarts i would suspect the video card.

Do you play any other games that are as graphic intense? Do they also cause a restart?


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## rohanprabhu (Jul 16, 2007)

@bobbydiaz: I play F.E.A.R, Doom III, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars [that's a pretty high-end game] and lots of Counter Strike: Source. It's the same engine as HL2EP2 and i play CSS at the same settings as a i play ep2 at. I even tried reducing all settings to a minimum.. but still nothing. No other game ever has caused this issue.


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## bobbydiaz (Sep 19, 2007)

Very strange, that rules out PSU or heat issues. Have you downloaded all of the updates for the game itself? that might help. Also check your event viewer to see if it gives you an error #.

To get to the event viewer, right click my computer choose manage, event viewer, system. look for any errors from around the time of the last crash or play the game again to get a crash and keep track of the time.


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## rohanprabhu (Jul 16, 2007)

I get these errors on system restart:










i didn't get any errors or anything worth noticing in the event viewer.


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## rohanprabhu (Jul 16, 2007)

i finally resolved this issue... i tried setting the following parameters to the game shortcut and it worked:

-nosound -window -dxlevel 80 +mat_forcehardwaresync 0

next, i removed the -window option and it still worked... So, i guess its working best at DirectX 8 and giving problems at DirectX 9.


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## BlooChoo (Jun 8, 2007)

and the game works fine with only onboard graphics???


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## BlooChoo (Jun 8, 2007)

also where did you look to get that resolution to the problem??


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## rohanprabhu (Jul 16, 2007)

BlooChoo said:


> also where did you look to get that resolution to the problem??


1. yes.. it worked perfectly on my onboard graphics chipset.. most of the games do.. even enemy territories did.

2. Some support page on http://steampowered.com


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## BlooChoo (Jun 8, 2007)

ah cool cos thats quite a complex fix to just come up with hehe..least it worked huh


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## Thinky Whinky (Oct 27, 2007)

Installed HL2 ep.2.
After Valve logo, while loading... my PC restart. M$ tells me that there's some problem with hardware (grafics).
Tried everything.
- updated drivers
- installed Riva Tuning
- changed command line (as rohanprabhu suggested)
...nothing to do :-(

I played *whitout* *any* *problem* HL2 and HL2 ep.1... can't believe that my pc, that's "only" 2 years old, isn't able to play HL2 ep.2

someone can help me? thx


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## BlooChoo (Jun 8, 2007)

well if u provide us with your computer specs we can help..it might be something to do with your graphics card being a lower version than specified as the minnimum requirements


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## Thinky Whinky (Oct 27, 2007)

Thanks!!!  

HP Pavilion t3120.it 
Intel Pentium 4 630 HT 3 GHz 
1 GB SDRAM DDR2
NVIDIA GeForce 6200 Turbocache 256 MB

HL2 ep 1 1280x1024 is playing fine...
HL2 ep 2 crashes while "Loading...". I've updated DirectX, defrag HD, nope... :down:  

bye


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## BlooChoo (Jun 8, 2007)

well ther is nothing wrong with the spec...as almost anything should be able to play episode 2..esspecially if episode 1 works fine...have u tried episode 1 recenlty? does that load fine?


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## Thinky Whinky (Oct 27, 2007)

Tried ep 1 just yesterday. Loaded & played whithout problems.
Joking with .cfg file, i could drive to crash also ep. 1... but didn't solve problems with ep.2.
Despite of MS error handling, I'm not so sure that's a graphics problem...
Can someone post the content of .cfg file?
thx


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## Thinky Whinky (Oct 27, 2007)

I got it!!! :up:  
Installed ForceWare Release 163.71 and ep2 is working!
I don't understand why self searching update of nVidia didn't find the right version...  

but now it's OK

thanks everybody!


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## Thinky Whinky (Oct 27, 2007)

Another (minor) problem...
I can't assign any key to "look up" and "look down". All right for others movements/weapons, but nada for looking up/down.
I can look up only with the mouse movements!


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## BlooChoo (Jun 8, 2007)

isnt that the way u want it to be?? the best set up for playijng a fps is the "head" movements controlled by the mouse....


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## Thinky Whinky (Oct 27, 2007)

Ok, BUT I prefer to associate "Page up" to "Look up".
I can do it in the configuration page, but it doesn't work...

thx


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## indneo (Dec 3, 2007)

hi rohan
i have similar configuration of sys to yours, except that my processor is intel dual core
but i am not able to play this game HL2 EP2 comfortably, it crashes every 20 minutes or when in game etc, i tried your suggestion still the same, any more ideas you got apart from the commandline variables please do let me know


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