(Non Amiga related) My PC keeps blue screening when I play a certain game.

[tokyoracer]

Hi there,
I recently dug deep and forked out for the Half Life Orange Box set and as the demo's always worked fine on here I thought that the game should work ok too. It seems that isn't true in this case.
Every time I start the first Half Life 2 game it emidiately locks up my pc, blue screen and a distorted sound flollowed quickly by a long beep from the speekers (possibly as I turned off the auto reset option). A serious error it seems of some sort but it desplays no text. I tried running it on the very plain 2nd hard drive (slave FAT32) but all that happens is it just resets itself (auto-reset is on I presume).
I'm starting to think it's my PSU but it has only done it on this game.

Any ideas? :-(

[koaftder]

Update them graphics drivers. Do the windows update thing. Make sure you've got the latest directX.

[Matt_H]

Don't run that game? :-D

Run a virus check, scan for spyware, see if new drivers are available for your hardware, and/or call/email Valve tech support.

[tokyoracer]

Turns out I needed older ATI drivers. Why the hell it isnt complatible with newer ones is beyond me. Fixed now so thanks for the help.

[pyrre]

Get yourself an nvidia gfx card. and driver problems are gone.

[whiteb]

Driver problem blue screens are even worse under Nvidia cards.

[tokyoracer]

True but I feel ATI still offers far more performance to money ratio then nvidia. Granted, nvidia drivers are better but when the ATI ones work they are super cards. Besides, they are owned by AMD and that means theres nothing going towards M$ which is a good enough reason to get one anyway in my opinion.

[arkanoid]

it's a myth that NVidia cards are more stable. I'm actually a big fan of CounterStrike:Source (based on HL engine) and I regularly experience similar blue screen crashes whenever NVidia update drivers. I often have to revert back to older versions of the driver.

so no, NVidia are no better, really. I guess they just have a larger fan-boy community telling everyone how great Nvidia are. :-)

[DBAlex]

I wouldn't go for a NVidia card, especially if your running Vista and/or you are using AGP...

I simply can't play almost all my games using a 7600GS AGP on Vista, and it worked perfectly on XP...

My ATI 9600SE was allways great though, if a little slower, but definitely more stable and the drivers were better.

People *allways* tell me Nvidia is better, but I've never actually experienced them being better myself...!

Alex.  :-D