HALF LIFE and WINDOWS XPPro!!

Hello,

I have been reading the threads and have reading that many, many gamers are having all kinds of OpenGl issues when playing Half - Life and using Windows XP.

I also am one of the and have experienced various degrees of success and failure.

I am very much involved i this industry and see all kinds of ‘defects’ that involve pc hardware, video drivers and all kinds of other anomailies.

For the most part after playing thousands of hours of Half Life I have used W2K and for the most part its a fairly stable platform for running Half-Life.

WIth a variety of video adapters, ie Voodoo series , Gforce series, and ATI Radeon series.

But moving to Windows XP has been full of intermittent heartburn!!!

I would like this post be a gathering place for HALF LIFE users that are trying to get HAlf Life to run in a stable way on their Windows XP systems.

I have a Shuttle AK31 ver 3 motherboard and a Gforce 4 4600 Titianium video adapter. It has the VIA 266A chipset. SO i have to use Via 4-in-1 Drivers, (version 4.42).

I am using all the latest XP fixs, SP1 etc. from WindowsUpdate.

I am using Nvida, unsigned (non-WHQL) drivers from Nvidia 41.09.

The major issues I am having are intermittent HL.exe errors and ntdll.dll errors.

If select start, programs, accessories, system tools, system information you will get to a window that show you all kinds of info abbout your system.

Click of Software Environment and select Windows Error Reporting. You will see a listing of all the errors that have occurred and have been captured by XP. WHn you see the do you want to send this info to Microsoft or not message pop up window.

If your having Hl.exe issue they will be her along with some technical address stuff that does not mean a lot to ‘us’

My HL.exe errors seem totally random.

I have tried the various HL.exe command line fixes using the -nocdaudio in the command line for starting up Half Life.

I use Gamespy as a front end to starting HL and findng my favorite servers to play on.

My errors seem to be lockups due to the HL.EXE faults that show up in the error log.

I will be playing for 10-20 minutes and for no apparent reason the Half Life game is stopped by this HL Windows trap messageing system…

Yo exit out and either send the info to MIcrosoft or not then go back into the game via Gamespy and start all over and yo will experience this lock up again randomly

I have tried not using a Virus program ( I use AVG) and have tried turning off y software firewall program(I use ZoneAlarm, nto the PRo version). Still I get these hangs.

I get occaisional ntdll.dll hangs or traps or faults…

From what little I have been able to garner, MIcrosoft in their Knowledge base tells you HL.EXE is Incompatible with Windows XP!!!

They have several issues with several verisons of Half Life and the this incompatibility is mentioned BUT the solutions is NOT. Microsoft instructs you to go to Sierra.com for a solution.

A friend across town has a W2K system with aGforce 3 adapter and all the latest stuff, drives etc…and runs Virus and Zonealarm and has this system acting as a HALF LIFE SERVER, stable and NO hangs!!

On his second system SOYO KT333 based board A Dragon Ultra Platinum, with WINDOWS XPPro, he has a ATI Radeon 9700 with the laest drivers from ATI…he gets HL.exe errors all day long!!

We have been trying to determine where the fault could be, and we are both good troubleshooters, by the lets swap this for that routine, and we have replaced video adapters, from the ATI Radeo 9700 to the ‘other’ stable systems Gforce 3 44400 adatper, still hangs…

We are down to either the system board or power supply, but for some reason I do not think its that, I wish I could make some sense of the actual fault module information that is presented in the system information panels…

There seesm to be a possible interaction with the motherboard chipset, ther bussmaster drivers used, many board manufactures have changed these drivers as processor speed, AGP stuff, and new OS have arrived on the scene, trying to find a combination that works for Half Life can be very painful.

Ok, enough rambling on, If anyone wants to add anything that may help Half Life gamers
find a stable solution to these HL.exe errors while in game or any other faults that happen with WINDOWS XP, please chime in…

I also have written Sierra and would encourage thsoe that have this proble do likewise…if its a Sierra issue (once someone does ‘root cause determination’) then we need to keep pinging them!!

I apologize for any mispellings!!

Thanks.
Alex

I seem to have the same trouble and i have a Radeon 8500 card, i thought it was the cards problem…
Anyway my HL/CS jamms after about 10-20 minutes and is caught by the XP error system.
Ive tried to fix it in many ways like downloading latest drivers and formating my whole harddrive. I also reintalled the game.

How do you fix this problem?

If Microsoft says that the game is NOT COMPATIBLE WITH XP, I believe they do it for a reason…

My 0.02

I suggest you go here, I have had the same problem in SOF2 and now Quake 3 http://www.xp-refresh.net/ problem appears to be refresh rates/open gl based as shown above.

i had same problem but has been solved
(i could not play half life with my leadtek gforce4 mx 440 wwith wind2k)

i downloaded this file
" nVidia Refresh Rate Fix MKII for Detonator 40.41 "
At this addresse

" http://www.voodoofiles.com/7780 "

nVidia Refresh Rate Fix MKII v2.00 E

Features

  • Solves 60 Hz bug for DirectDraw, Direct3D and OpenGL
  • Lets you specify refresh rates from 60 up to 240.
  • Compatible to Detonator 40.41
  • Also works with older Detonators, since 28.32

Description
If you have a nVidia graphics card, you’ll probably know about the very common bug, that occurs together with the nVidia Detonator drivers under Windows NT/2000/XP: Normally, you can’t get a higher refresh rate than 60 Hz in the OpenGL/Direct3D modes, which makes you very blind after a while of gaming. :wink: I programmed this tool, to fix this bug, since I could not find an existing tool for this on the internet, which is compatible with the new official Detonator v28.32 drivers. There already were some tools around that supported the older Detonator versions.

I don’t think i am having that problem with half life. my problem is that it installs correctly-but when i go to play the game, i put the disc in the drive, and then click play…but it keeps saying the disk isn’t in the drive. any suggesting? i’ve looked for updates for xp for this, or half life, in case they went back to fix this, but i can’t find any.

Have u tried it ?
otherwise try the tech support forum of the game that causes problems… most often u can find specific settings of your own PC config… somtimes simply gaining FPS can help the card… also refresh rates…

the answer is out there but there are too many parameters to controll this technologie unless u really dig it ! (PC technology is crap but we are stuck with it cos it is every where )

well, i have a similar problome that i cant get fixed too.

after 20-30 mins of play, half life hangs and gives an error saying that hl.exe crap, but it also gives me something about nvogl.dll iv been sending microsoft an error report each time, and they have comeup with patches to fix it, but none of them worked.

some one plz help me.

for half life problems go to this page
most of this modifications will improve both your system and game

it is what allowed me to run opengl buglessly
http://forums.dayofdefeatmod.com/forums/…&threadid=27528

other wise try cleaning off all of half life from system then reinstalling the game but with antivirus and firewall shut down…
(some times antivirus’s take over controll of where and what goes into system so somtimes missing files problems are solved that way)
but for open gl solutions i see very little answers posted here… i suppose this is the “idiots” post !

Originally posted by Yawn:
[b]If Microsoft says that the game is NOT COMPATIBLE WITH XP, I believe they do it for a reason…

My 0.02[/b]

you are gay. who cares what microsoft says

Originally posted by arey:
you are gay.

No I’m not, so you have to look for a new lover somewhere else.

My problem with half-life is that if i started a game in 800x600 resolution, my monitor would whistle, and the game would freeze shortly after loading… That xp-refresh fixed that. This isn’t limited to OpenGL, microsoft has mentioned in an article that Direct3D can crap out if running a rate faster than 60hz on XP! The only games I’ve had trouble with are Diablo 2 and Half-Life, so far. Diablo 2 I have to run in DirectDraw to keep it from crashing my computer, other D3D based games don’t seem to have a problem. Half-Life was immediately fixed upon downloading that program mentioned above. It optimizes the refresh rates on your computer, just like 98/Me used to. Try it out, I had no idea refresh rates were so important, because I’ve always used 98, it did it for me.

i JUST BOUGHT A NEW SYSTEM AND IT WAS LOADED WITH xp…Now my bran new Pent4/cable modem/128mb video card are useless because I can’t get into a multiplayer game.

I was able to load HL/TF but when I click on a server I get a “could not connect to game server…invalid authentication information” message.

I bought this new system primarily to play team fortress…now I feel pretty screwed. I hate XP!!!

If anyone can give me some advise I would love to get back on line in the game/

later-snafu

Originally posted by adydula:
[b]Hello,

I have been reading the threads and have reading that many, many gamers are having all kinds of OpenGl issues when playing Half - Life and using Windows XP.

I also am one of the and have experienced various degrees of success and failure.

I am very much involved i this industry and see all kinds of ‘defects’ that involve pc hardware, video drivers and all kinds of other anomailies.

For the most part after playing thousands of hours of Half Life I have used W2K and for the most part its a fairly stable platform for running Half-Life.

WIth a variety of video adapters, ie Voodoo series , Gforce series, and ATI Radeon series.

But moving to Windows XP has been full of intermittent heartburn!!!

I would like this post be a gathering place for HALF LIFE users that are trying to get HAlf Life to run in a stable way on their Windows XP systems.

I have a Shuttle AK31 ver 3 motherboard and a Gforce 4 4600 Titianium video adapter. It has the VIA 266A chipset. SO i have to use Via 4-in-1 Drivers, (version 4.42).

I am using all the latest XP fixs, SP1 etc. from WindowsUpdate.

I am using Nvida, unsigned (non-WHQL) drivers from Nvidia 41.09.

The major issues I am having are intermittent HL.exe errors and ntdll.dll errors.

If select start, programs, accessories, system tools, system information you will get to a window that show you all kinds of info abbout your system.

Click of Software Environment and select Windows Error Reporting. You will see a listing of all the errors that have occurred and have been captured by XP. WHn you see the do you want to send this info to Microsoft or not message pop up window.

If your having Hl.exe issue they will be her along with some technical address stuff that does not mean a lot to ‘us’

My HL.exe errors seem totally random.

I have tried the various HL.exe command line fixes using the -nocdaudio in the command line for starting up Half Life.

I use Gamespy as a front end to starting HL and findng my favorite servers to play on.

My errors seem to be lockups due to the HL.EXE faults that show up in the error log.

I will be playing for 10-20 minutes and for no apparent reason the Half Life game is stopped by this HL Windows trap messageing system…

Yo exit out and either send the info to MIcrosoft or not then go back into the game via Gamespy and start all over and yo will experience this lock up again randomly

I have tried not using a Virus program ( I use AVG) and have tried turning off y software firewall program(I use ZoneAlarm, nto the PRo version). Still I get these hangs.

I get occaisional ntdll.dll hangs or traps or faults…

From what little I have been able to garner, MIcrosoft in their Knowledge base tells you HL.EXE is Incompatible with Windows XP!!!

They have several issues with several verisons of Half Life and the this incompatibility is mentioned BUT the solutions is NOT. Microsoft instructs you to go to Sierra.com for a solution.

A friend across town has a W2K system with aGforce 3 adapter and all the latest stuff, drives etc…and runs Virus and Zonealarm and has this system acting as a HALF LIFE SERVER, stable and NO hangs!!

On his second system SOYO KT333 based board A Dragon Ultra Platinum, with WINDOWS XPPro, he has a ATI Radeon 9700 with the laest drivers from ATI…he gets HL.exe errors all day long!!

We have been trying to determine where the fault could be, and we are both good troubleshooters, by the lets swap this for that routine, and we have replaced video adapters, from the ATI Radeo 9700 to the ‘other’ stable systems Gforce 3 44400 adatper, still hangs…

We are down to either the system board or power supply, but for some reason I do not think its that, I wish I could make some sense of the actual fault module information that is presented in the system information panels…

There seesm to be a possible interaction with the motherboard chipset, ther bussmaster drivers used, many board manufactures have changed these drivers as processor speed, AGP stuff, and new OS have arrived on the scene, trying to find a combination that works for Half Life can be very painful.

Ok, enough rambling on, If anyone wants to add anything that may help Half Life gamers
find a stable solution to these HL.exe errors while in game or any other faults that happen with WINDOWS XP, please chime in…

I also have written Sierra and would encourage thsoe that have this proble do likewise…if its a Sierra issue (once someone does ‘root cause determination’) then we need to keep pinging them!!

I apologize for any mispellings!!

Thanks.
Alex[/b]

[quote] If Microsoft says that the game is NOT COMPATIBLE WITH XP, I believe they do it for a reason [quote]
does anyone know how i can fix that problem. every time i try and start the game it sais: Half-Life has a known compatibility issue with this version of Windows. For an update that is compatible with this version of Windows, contact Sierra.
how can i fix this problem thanks

I’ve had some weird problems with HL. I have Windows XP with an AMD Athalon, 1.8 ghz, 512 MB of RAM, Radeon 7500 64 MB AGP, and when I play HL, after about 5 minutes my computer just turns completely off. I’m pretty sure its not a power problem, and every other game works fine, including UT2K3 and BF1942. I also have the same problem running Counterstrike, which is the retail version, installed off a totally different CD. Any possible explanation/help?

Lots of strange Problems u have.
I have Half-Life with newest Update here on my WinXP Machine, and everything works fine.

I am having a simialar problem but not exactly. When I try to run HL/CS in OpenGL mode it gives me the error “This OpenGL mode is not supported by your graphics card” However, I know it is. It worked fine for along time and then out of the blue it just starting giving me this error. So I reinstaled all the drivers for my card, I reinstalled Windows XP, got all of the service packs and updates, I bought a new graphics card(that supports OpenGL), I got the latest drivers for it, I updated my BIOS, I tried unistallig and reinstalling Half-life. But I still can’t get it to work in OpenGL mode. It will work fine in Direct3D though. I am completely puzzled. Why would it work one day and not the next? I didn’t change anything it just quit working. Anyway any help if possible would be nice. But it looks like most people here have are havintg problems of there own. Is there anyway I can test to see if OpenGL works at all on my machine or if it is jsut a half-life problem.

Hello, I got I think the same problem as you, sometimes, when playing counter-strike (a half-life mod) it crashes and the sounds loops for like 5 to 10 seconds then it says that microsoft is sorry blabla… I tried running CS in a window and it’s doing it so it’s not a fullscreen bug…

Here’s the error message:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application Error
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Date: 3/21/2003
Time: 10:08:06 PM
User: N/A
Computer: AMD1000
Description:
Faulting application hl.exe, version 1.1.1.0, faulting module ntdll.dll, version 5.1.2600.1106, fault address 0x00006a2c.

And before I upgraded the video drivers (ATI make new drivers about every week lol)
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application Error
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Date: 3/20/2003
Time: 7:39:39 PM
User: N/A
Computer: AMD1000
Description:
Faulting application hl.exe, version 1.1.1.0, faulting module atioglxx.dll, version 6.14.10.3561, fault address 0x00043c01.

I surely think it’s a driver problem… It cant be anything else, cuz I didn’t had these problems with my Voodoo 5, Now I got a Radeon 7000/VE.

If someone would help me pleaseeeeeeee except telling me to play in direct3d or software…

Mat

That’s the same problem that I have. I have been reading all the other posts here. I have my XP set at 75hz refresh. When I get back to my PC (not here) I am going to change to 65 or 70hz, hopefully this will help. Will let you know!

Happy gaming all you guys that have NO problems!!!

Originally posted by BigB_WBU:
I am having a simialar problem but not exactly. When I try to run HL/CS in OpenGL mode it gives me the error “This OpenGL mode is not supported by your graphics card”

I used to play half-life and counterstrike on windows ME fine, but then after an unrelated incident I had to erase my hard drive twice which was very frustraiting, and I had to install XP as my os to keep my wireless network working. Now I try to install half-life and I get a shrinker.err mesage when I try to run the install execuatble. I tried deshrinking the file with DeShrink 1.6 but when I try to run that file I get an xp error report message. I’ve tried everything and it does not work, even disabling my virus protection but it seems hopeless. All I really want to play is counterstrike though.