Half-Life 2: Episode One - Looping Sound Crash/Freeze

Half-Life 2: Episode One The Looping Sound Crash/Freeze

First of all, this is not at all intended to flame Valve. This is to hopefully convince them to pay attention to the large majority of people experiencing the problem known as the looping sound crash/freeze. If anyone at Valve is reading this, please carry on reading. This bug has been unfixed for ages, and its highly irritating. Now, this hasnt always been the case. At the games release, we were able to play through the game without any problems and it was great. Since then, there have been several updates. The first, which offered a few gameplay additions, wasnt known to cause problems. The problem, for me, occurred as soon as Episode One content was added to the Source SDK.

The looping sound crash/freeze has done exactly this to the many computers it happens on:

The player launches the game and starts a new game. It runs flawlessly for a couple minutes or so. At random, the game simply freezes, playing 1 frame about every 15-20 seconds, looping small audio fragments over and over. In theory, the game is still running its just reeeally slow. Once that has happened, the game stays that way and must be terminated through the task manager. That is simply it.

Now Im just going to list some useful information.

Suspected causes (for the most part, the cause is unknown):

Source engine memory problems/leaks
Hard drive accesses
Autosaves
Corrupt data
**Maps compiled with HDR**

Suspected fixes (none of these have worked for most people):

Disabling autosaves
Upgrading to 2GB RAM
Rolling back to previous video card driver versions

The cause is unknown and there is no fix as far as I know.

The following has been done in attempt to fix the problem:

Trying the above fixes
Updated all drivers (motherboard, video card, etc.)
Reinstalled
Verified GCF files
Disabling HDR

without success.

None of my hardware is overclocked, and it should be able to run the game perfectly. Im using an AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.2GHz, a ATI Radeon X1800XT 256MB, and 1GB RAM.

Steam Support:

Many weeks back, I submitted a support ticket on this. They started off by replying with a couple copy-paste messages telling me to update my drivers, etc. Then they actually started reading what I had to say. I was told to try rolling back the DirectX level. The game actually worked when running in DirectX 7 through 8.1, but quite frankly, my computer can run the game just fine in DX9, and Id like to run it that way. They also told me to disable sound, which didnt help, so its not a problem with the audio chipset. To put it simply, theyve been useless. Theyve even stopped replying!

Valve, I ask that you take some time to look into this. It would be most appreciated to see this fixed. We fear that your upcoming titles may suffer from the same problem, and if they do, we will refund them or refuse to buy altogether.

Again, we can play the game for a couple minutes without any problems, then the game simply freezes with looping sound, without reason.

Please take a few moments to look at this thread at the Steam Users Forums:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=444078

It has reached over 1000 replies and still going.

Okay, so Ive let that out. Im not so great with words, but thanks for reading. Everybody who is experiencing the looping sound crash/freeze, please sign the petition.

Also feel free to Email me: [email protected]

-Sam