P-7805u FX - source games keep crashing

So I just recently got the gateway p7805u fx, 1920x1200 res; but any source games I play seem to be randomly crashing. Counter Strike Source, Age of Chivalry, Fistful of Frags, etc. I get great performance and frame rate while playing, but it seems to randomly crash.

Sometimes I go an hour with nothing, or 15 minutes with 2 or 3 crashes. The "crash" will either be the game I'm playing suddenly stops responding and closes, or a few times the screen has even locked up and small red blocks appear all over and I have to hard boot it.

It doesn't seem like it's overheating, and I just installed the latest drivers yesterday. Any ideas or suggestions?

 

I have been having these issues recently too, with all the steam games I have. One thing that has helped is loading the games from the steam menu, and not from a shortcut. I am fairly positive that it is an issue with steam, and not a hardware issue.

 

I know Steam isn't known for being stable, but it sucks when I'm trying to play with some friends and I'm the only one getting kicked every half hour. Seems like there's something wrong on my end.

 

Source has been working fine for me on Windows 7 64bit build 7100

 

Did this problem happen before you installed the latest drivers? Did you uninstall the previous drivers first? What drivers are you using/what was previously installed?

 

Yeah, it was happening before I installed the latest driver. That's why I installed the newer one, hoping it would fix the problem. I downloaded this one: http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_winvista64_186.03_whql.html GeForce release 186.03.

I did not uninstall my previous driver before downloading and installing that one though. Could that be the problem? This is the first computer I've had with the hardware to even bother with computer gaming, I've always stuck to consoles in the past. So I'm certainly not up to date or very knowledgeable about getting my system up-and-running.

*Edit: I'm not sure what driver was previously installed, is there a way I could find out?

 

Have you run any stress tests since getting the laptop? Do any other games besides source games give this problem?

 

I have not run any stress tests, nor do I know how to. The only game I've played not based on a source engine is UT 3. Didn't crash once during a 3 hour session.

I think I'll go ahead an uninstall/reinstall the driver when I get back from work later today. Should I stick with the 186.03 or try a 182 or 183? Heard they are more stable.

 

I've had the best luck with Dox 182.46 drivers, but other people prefer other drivers. The trick is to find one that works great for you, and then stick with it.

You definitely want to uninstall the old drivers first, and run driversweeper. http://downloads.guru3d.com/Guru3D---Driver-Sweeper-(Setup)_d1655.html

Use the official uninstaller(s) of the driver(s) you want to uninstall.
Reboot your PC in Safe Mode (Press F8 before Windows starts loading).
Clean AGEIA - Physx and Nvidia - Display

3dMark06 is a good video stress test, also available for free download online.
http://www.futuremark.com/benchmarks/3dmark06/download/

Is your Power Plan (Power Options in Control Panel) set to High-Performance?

Don't guess if it's overheating, there are several free programs you can use to monitor temperatures.

 

Ok, well I tried a lot of different stuff to no avail tonight. I used the thread about installing drivers as a guide, so I uninstalled, cleaned, rebooted, then installed each driver.

First redid the 186.03
Then tried Dox 185.85
Then Nvidia's older 185.81

I also tried each of the three above with my dxlevel set to 81 and then even 70. And every time I got the hl2.exe error in about 20-30 min of playing. I don't have a program monitoring the temp, but running my hand across the whole laptop I never felt it heat up that much (very technical, I know).

Took all evening trying different setups and playing until it crashed, then rinse and repeat. Guess I'll try older drivers tomorrow. And if those still don't work, maybe install Windows 7. Unless anyone has any better ideas?

 

Fresh install of Vista perhaps? Windows 7?

 

Did that 3d stress test linked earlier. Here's the results if it helps at all: http://service.futuremark.com/home.action;jsessionid=75A9E1E24F312044F294BA8FA8ED4F79

I'd like to save reinstalling the OS or changing my OS as the last option. And if I do, think I'll just go with Windows 7, no real reason to stick with Vista. Thanks for the help and suggestions, I'll keep y'all updated as I try more stuff tomorrow evening.

 

I apologize for not having a more helpful opinion, but reformatting and installing Windows 7 was the first thing I did when I received my laptop, besides burning the recovery CDs.

 

Haha, no need to apologize, I understand. I just started the Windows 7 download anyway. Have a feeling it'll come down to that anyway.

 

I like starting fresh with any system I have, mainly so that if I do have issues later on, I know what I have installed and what could be the issue.

Good luck!

 

We can't see your results. Was your score around 8500?

There are tons of free temperature monitoring programs.. hwmonitor, speedfan, ntune, rmclock (cpu temp), etc.

Have you tried verifying the steam games cache? What about reinstalling steam+games (Starting from scratch, deleting the entire Steam folder)

 

Oh sorry, didn't know the link didn't work for other people. I'm at work now so can't view the results either, but yeah it was around 8500.

I don't think overheating is the problem. But I'll look into one of those programs.

And yes, I did a complete reinstall of steam and the games, but that was a few days ago with the original driver. I did verify the cache yesterday though.

I'm just going to do a complete wipe and try Windows 7 later tonight. What drivers do you use for that 7earitup?

 

You can use Vista drivers or 7 drivers. Dox 182.46 have always worked great for me, in many different setups. The 3 drivers you listed are very new, I would try some slightly older ones as well.

You wouldnt have to reinstall steam and your games again after changing drivers, if you did all that you should definitely check temps, and look for a TSZ0 spike or any temperatures climbing high.

What is the HL2 error?

 

Just a generic hl2.exe has encountered an error and needs to close.

 

Well, installed windows 7 and the Dox 182.46, and it still crashed after about 17 minutes. Here's the "more details" output of the error message.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: hl2.exe
Application Version: 0.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 4445c334
Fault Module Name: datacache.dll
Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 46439c7b
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 0000b423
OS Version: 6.1.7100.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: bc26
Additional Information 2: bc26af3a4b8e73594f75f10d43ef3916
Additional Information 3: 3e74
Additional Information 4: 3e7412395ebb141bc054dfbd1e4673cb

Read our privacy statement online:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=104288&clcid=0x0409

If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline:
C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt


I'm going to install one of those temperature monitoring programs and see if overheating is in fact a problem...

 

Let us know what you find out. Kinda running out of other explanations.

 

Hmm, well I didn't change a thing. Ran the same Dox 182.46 in Windows 7; but was just now able to play for a full hour and a half. Didn't even crash after that, just need to get off for the night.

Used HWmonitor for that last session. Peak levels:

GPU: 61
HDD: 61
ACPI: 57
Both Cores: 42 and 45

Like I said, didn't change anything from the last time (except installing and running hwmonitor) but it lasted over 3 times as long, and possibly longer.

Might not be able to test it again for the next couple of days, but I'll keep updating when I can. Thanks for all the help and suggestions.

 

Those temps look absolutely fine.

 

Had similar problem with Fear2 and steam, found a suggestion to reload MS DirectX files, seamed to do the trick. Nice and smooth with zero crashes.

Using latest NVIDIA notebook driver, now I always reload DirectX after updating video drivers.

7811FX.

 

Alright, well after playing some more with the Dox 182.46, I'm happy. Other than the very first time, haven't had it crash on me in over 10 hours of play time now.

However, it doesn't seem to support HDMI for dual display. So, just as an experiment I switched to the latest 186.03 nvidia driver. Could get my dual display going through the HDMI, but once again the source games kept crashing. Switched back to the Dox 182.46, and the games were working fine again.

Thanks for all the help everyone, +rep around

 

I would also like to point out that Nvidia recommends that we (Gateway Laptop owners) only use the drivers they have supplied for us. They don't recommend that you upgrade to the current version.

It really is an experiment process, like someone else mentioned, and if you find a set of drivers that works don't change.

I am currently using 179.51 (something like that) and everything works fine for me. I am not inclined to change because all the games I play work perfectly (DOW2, WOW etc...).

Anyways, still no crashing?