This is really wierd. So I downloaded and installed three new weapon skins. One of them didn't work right, but I didn't have a problem with it. So I played a couple matches with them, no problems, but during the buildphase on sf_cargo the game froze (audio repeating), but went back to normal after a few seconds. Well, the audio went back to normal, but the video was still entirely frozen. I quit (using the console, as it still worked, I just couldn't see it). Now, if I skip the opening cutscene, the game CTD's a second or two into the "loading..." for the splash screen. The one time I didn't skip it, it worked, and I was trying to join the same server that problem happened on, when during the loading, I got a "Internal driver error in Direct3DDevice9:: present()" error.

I get these errors all the time in other mods (Insurgency, Synergy, hell, I can't play Insurgency for 5 seconds before I get one).

I have done all the steps to fix that problem for this mod, and it worked fine, until now.

Can anyone help?


EDIT: I just tried not skipping the opening scene and still had the problem. Also of note, during the opening scene, right before the guy shoots the block, the screen flashes white for a split second.

And I just checked the gameinfo.txt file, and with the mounting I got this:

SteamAppId 215// This will mount all the GCFs we need (240=CS:S, 220=HL2).
ToolsAppId 211 // Tools will load this (ie: source SDK caches) to get things like materials\debug, materials\editor, etc.

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In-game Name: Bass Ackwards
L2GRAMMAR OR GTFO

Sounds like a hardware issue, simply because I havn't seen persistent crashing like this before.

Your graphics card drivers may be out of date and there might be one graphical system that is causing your game to bugger up - which would explain varying lengths of time until the crash - for example, for some reason maybe it can't handle dynamic light entities well.

It could also be an overheat. If you have an ATI card, they have a debug feature that, in the event they crash or overheat, they cool off for a few moments before restarting and reloading the drivers. I haven't seen it happen before, but theoretically it would be possible to resume a broken game - however, as the games obviously aren't made to handle this, it may explain why you get a stuck picture. Also make sure that your PSU has enough wattage for your graphics cards - I've seen people crash continuously because they were running 8800 GTX's by hot wiring 4 regular molex connectors into 2 pci sockets (Nvidia stupidly give you the tools to do that) and wondering why the card was drawing so much power.

Also check your sound card drivers. You can totally disable sound in source, though I've forgotten the exact cvar. Just type "find sound" in console, and you'll probably see something like r_enablesound. If this fixes the problem, reinstall your sound card drivers or find alternatives. There are normally drivers available for popular sound cards that aren't made by the actual card manufacturer.

If all else fails, as you said this is a source-wide issue, you could take the issue to valve, and they might have a better chance giving you a right idea.

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http://www.stieffers.com/Other/SF_Signature_Khuskan.gif

Khuskan it's a command line switch "-nosound 1".

Now I used to get similar issues to Shadow (not crash on startup, but the looping sound and freezing graphics, as well as direct3ddevice9::present() errors) until I upgraded my graphics card. If you have another PC at your place or a mate who is willing to spare his graphics card for a few days then swap the graphics card out with a different one. Also check your drivers are updated, including motherboard drivers.

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sf_skiff

Well, now I'm pretty sure that by not skipping the opening cutscene iit doesn't matter. I think that was just a one time thing.

Though it doesn't seem to have anything to do with overheating. I manually installed the biggest fan I could find in the side of my comp, right near the gfx card.
I'm using an nVidia 6200 with 256 mb RAM, with fully updated drivers, (I think my sound drivers are updated as well).

Just to clarify: I've NEVER had a problem with CTD'ing after the opening cutscene until now.

Though I have no objection to getting a new gfx card....I just don't know how I'm going to get one. Any good deals you know of?

__________________
In-game Name: Bass Ackwards
L2GRAMMAR OR GTFO

OK, I just tried it again (a day after the problem) and while the flash in the opening cutscene is still there, I was able to start a server and play on it with no problems.
I'll see how it goes for a while.

__________________
In-game Name: Bass Ackwards
L2GRAMMAR OR GTFO