.

I get similar crashes intermittently with a black or frozen screen + sound loop while mumble continues to work. Sometimes I can kill the process before my computer completely locks up. I've heard of other people with this problem as well.

Unfortunately I'm in the same boat -- I have no idea what causes the problem, I only know that it's not just you.

same thing happens to me

Are you always running Mumble when it happens?

I have this same damn problem. Apparently all Nvidia series 400 gfx cards are affected and I've been having the issue for nearly a year now.

I have figured out how to temporarily fix it though: when it starts to crash launch Task Manager and kill WerFault.exe. It sometimes recovers TF2 and sometimes it doesn't.

I have a gtx 465 and have no such problems.

@enigma how did you test your cpu, ram, and GPU and what are your PC specs.

9800gtx+
i5 2500k
some ram

tested it with memtest overnight, orthos overnight, and 3dmark06 with maxed settings

I had this issue for years (yes, years) with my Nvidia 285 GTX card. I replaced nearly every single component in my PC (even the power supply) and nothing changed until I finally just got a new mobo / processor / video card.

Incidentally, my newer video card (an ATI card) got fucked up and while I was waiting for a RMA I had to use one of the 285 GTX cards again, one that I had gotten from one of the three RMAs I did for my two cards. Guess what? It's blackscreening my computer all over again (now in Guild Wars 2), even with every single other component in the PC being new from the original build. I had sold the other card to a friend for him to use in his Mac and he's never reported a single issue with it. I can only assume its something about certain Nvidia cards and probably Windows 7 64. :/

Since switching over, I never had any sort of problems with my ATI card; not to sound like a fangirl but I definitely don't regret ragequitting Nvidia, especially seeing that after all this time (I got the 285s when they came out and they've always black screen / sound looped me) and all these drivers the Nvidia card can still do this shit.

The thing which always confused me was that it wasn't JUST HL2.exe; it'd crash Rift and Guild Wars 2 in similar fashion. Now it just does it randomly, if it goes idle or just while I'm sitting around on Skype or something. :/

All 8800 9800 200 series nvidia cards suffer from this bug. For over a year neither valve nor nvidia even acknowledged it. It started during the uber update. Nvidia has now been working on a fix at least since august.

The only known fix is to run your game in DX8. You will not crash if you do, but of course the gaming exp is not as good. I had the same frusterating crashes with my 280 card and finally gave up and ran in DX8, I haven't crashed since (over 8 months).

Mge always has a problem with it being fps drops or random freezes.

i get this problem with dx8 blueberry

are you sure you set it up properly S?

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1774666&page=28

Follow the dude Sugiohs instructions on that page, I was litterally black screening every hour I played, once I did that, I have never once crashed again.

Well, for one use these drivers if you aren't already on them. http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_32bit_197.45_whql.html

It's the last driver version designed for 200 series GPU's (which includes the GTS 250, which is the same as your card).

and follow this guide to install them.
http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=1519930

I'll add more later.

EDIT: Memtest86 can only test ~3.5 GB of ram in windows. If you have more than you need to burn/create a bootable copy of memtest to run in DOS. The best method is to do so with each individual module/stick of ram installed by it's self to identify the offending module/modules.

I've looked up orthos, since I've never used it before, and it seems as though it only creates a processing thread that stresses 2 cores? If so, I'd highly recommend using Prime95 instead that creates a thread for each core no matter the number. Running that overnight for 8/9 hours is fine.

I have this same issue on an ATI card (if the problem is even relevant to gfx cards)

hot computer?

Reading through this thread and the one on steam, it seems the problems are with the 8800 - 300series cards from nvidia. However, I had these problems with my 460gtx. Now I do not have any problems with my current 580gtx. You can stress test your computer all you want but, I don't think it's anything on your end. It's nvidia's drivers or valve's shitty coding with tf2. I'm leaning more towards valve.

I also recently bought a ssd and have tf2 on it. All my problems with tf2 stopped. Any fps issues, crashes, everything stopped. I wonder if anyone have the same experience as me.

#9 - miyari. I had the exact problem as you, but with ati. Every ati card I owned, I rma'd at least twice. The last straw was with my 4870 that I rma'd 3 times and still had driver issues and it crashed my computer. Went to nvidia 460gtx and the only problems was tf2.

I had the same issue, black screen and sound loop, running in DX8 fixed it for me also. It's ugly, but it no longer crashes hourly.

I have a Nvidia gtx 265. There are only certain nvidia cards that were affected. If other people are seeing crashes on other cards, it may be some new bug that is manifesting itself in the same way.

Drivers. How old is your PSU?

I used to have this problem too, but with an ATI 5770. I used to think it was just my power supply, but apparently not! Mine would happen maybe once every few weeks, but my computer screen would just randomly go black and crash. Luckily, it left me with the ability to talk in mumble long enough to tell my team that TF2 fucked me again.

Does anyone know why my tf2 won't launch? It starts launching and then before it even gets to the loading screen hl2.exe stops working. This has only started happening recently and I haven't messed with configs or launch options lately.

I had that problem with my nvidia gtx 275 card (i think it was because the card was overheating or something). So far the nvidia gtx 670 card hasn't had that problem.

I have this with GTX 260, except 90% of the time i can Alt-tab or ctrl+alt+del to see the desktop and wait a few seconds i can restore the game.

This used to happen to me and I researched for weeks to get to the root of the issue. First off, there's a few possible causes:

1.) It's the monitor or the wiring between the two. This can easily be tested by plugging in a different monitor and seeing if you get the same result. It's worth trying, but it wasn't personally the issue for me.

2.) Your PSU is dying and your power supply is insufficient for taxing games or playing for long periods of time. This was the issue for me after I got a new graphics card and tried to play with an old PSU. The computer was drawing too much power and would randomly sound loop and then shut off and the only way to get visuals again was to restart the computer. It sounds exactly like the problem you're currently having.

3.) Your graphics card itself is experiencing issues. Overheating, driver issues, etc. Worth checking out for sure.

4.) Overheating. Just install something like Everest or another PC temp monitor. Make sure nothing is running inexplicably hot and make sure your PC is well ventilated and all the fans are working properly. Open up your PC and dust it and see if that helps as well.

This should probably in a new thread, but make sure you don't have any overlays attempting to run in TF2. Mumble and Fraps should work but others may cause crashes. Think of any new programs that may be running and conflicting with TF2, IE: new/different anti-virus, PC monitoring software, or even newly installed hardware.

My brother had this happening with his 285... We peeled it apart, cleaned it, applied new thermal paste, and now it's stable.

Might give it a shot, because paste is cheap.

Alright, I just had the same problem as enigma after using Game Booster. If you're using it, I recommend turning it off because it seems to prioritize the game to the point where it takes up a ton more resources than it would normally.

In the same boat too, gonna defrag TF2 files, also might be temperature so I'm gonna clean my pc.

For those who wanna test:

http://youtu.be/ccmoToUgEpo

Also -nod3d9ex causes very frequent crash problems for me and a few other people. I wouldn't use it anymore at all.

Double post, go to next page