by Teh Blob! on Thu Oct 30, 2008 6:41 am 
Every time I try to load Counter Strike Source at the moment I get the following error message appearing:
"hl2.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."
Basically, I can open steam fine, and when i try and start Counter Strike it comes up with the dialog saying 'Loading Counter Strike Source' or similar, then it stops and I get the Valve dialog box popping up with that message above.
It's driving me mad and has been this way for about two weeks now. I have tried everything I can think of but have just hit a complete brick wall and really need some help now!
I have tried the following fixes:
Reinstalled steam (that's uninstalling then reinstalling the whole of steam, not just CS:S)
I have also tried deleting the .blob files, which someone suggested, and that made no difference either.
I have also run the steam crash test function. The results from that were:
* Display drivers: Failed
Your nVidia display drivers are currently out of date
For updated drivers, click here
Display Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT
Display Version: 6.14.11.7824
Recommended Driver Version: 91.47
Recommended Driver Date: 09/01/2006
Severity: Very High
* DirectX: Passed
Your version of DirectX meets the minimum requirements
* UDP Ports: Passed
The following UDP ports were reachable.
UDP Port: 27000 - 27040
* TCP Ports: Passed
The following TCP ports were reachable.
TCP Port: 27020 - 27040
* Background Processes: Passed
There were no processes found that conflict with Steam or the games.
* Loaded Modules: Passed
There were no loaded modules found that conflict with Steam or the games.
* Services: Passed
There were no services found that conflict with Steam or the games.
* Layered Service Providers: Passed
There were no LSPs found that should conflict with Steam or the games.
* Audio/Video Codecs: Passed
There were no audio/video codecs found that conflict with Steam or the games.
Possible Suggestions
If Steam continues to crash, try deleting all files and folders in the Steam directory except for steam.exe and the SteamApps folder
If you continue to have problems playing the games, try using the launch options -nosound and -windowed.
Open Steam, then Play games
Right click the Souce game, click properties, then Launch options
add -nosound -windowed, click ok, then close.
* Basic Information
[+] Counter-Strike: Source
So I went to the Nvidia site and have updated my display drivers to 178.24 which is the latest one. (Although when I run the crash test again, I still get the same message about having to update drivers - not sure why when they are now on the latest version)
I have also tried adding those commands to the launch properties of CS:S but that hasn't helped either. (-nosound -windowed)
So i'm pretty stuck now really... does anyone have any suggestions?
My system info is:
AMD AThlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ 2.21Ghz
1 GB Ram
Nvidia 7800 GT
Windows XP SP3
The only other thing i can think of that would be useful to tell you is that when I was updating to XP SP3 a few weeks ago I had a few problems with it not installing properly, so I ended up having to run some strange programme from microsoft that would then allow me to install it properly. i don't know if that might have somehow had an effect on CS:S?
Thanks in advance.
